WALLED   TOWNS 


WALLED  TOWNS 


By 
RALPH  ADAMS  CRAM 

LITT.D.,    LL.D. 


BOSTON 

MARSHALL  JONES  COMPANY 

MDCCCCXX 


Copyright,   1919 
By  Marshall  Jones  Company 


All  rights  reserved. 

First  Printing,  September,  1919 
Second  Printing,  February,  1920 


THE   UKI\'CKSrrY  PHESS,   CAUBRIDCE,  U.   S.   A. 


I 


V 


151 


WALLED  TOWNS 


PROLOGUE 

THE  Stone-flagged  path  on  the  top  of 
the  high  walls  winds  along  within 
the  battlemented  parapet,  broken 
here  and  there  by  round  turrets,  steeple- 
crowned  barriers  of  big  timbers  and,  at 
wider  intervals,  great  towers,  round  or 
square  or  many-sided,  where  bright  ban- 
ners blow  in  the  unsullied  air.  From  one 
side  you  may  look  down  on  and  into  the  dim 
city  jostling  the  ramparts  with  crowding 
walls  and  dizzy  roofs,  from  the  other  the 
granite  scarp  drops  sheer  to  the  green  fields 
and  vari-coloured  gardens  and  shadowy  or- 
chards full  forty  feet  below. 

Within,  the  city  opens  up  in  kaleido- 
scopic vistas  as  you  walk  slowly  around  the 
walls:  here  are  the  steep  roofs  of  tall  houses 
with  delicate  dormers,  fantastic  chimney 
stacks,  turret  cupolas  with  swinging  weather 
vanes;  here  the  closed  gardens  of  rich  bur- 

[I] 


24G500 


WALLED   TOWNS 

gcsscs,  full  of  arbours,  flowers,  pleached 
alleys  of  roses,  espaliers  of  pear  and  necta- 
rine; here  a  convent  or  guild  chapel,  newly 
worked  of  yellow  stone  and  all  embroidered 
with  the  garniture  of  niches,  balustrades, 
pinnacles.  Here,  under  one  of  the  city 
gates,  opens  a  main  street,  narrow  and  wind- 
ing but  walled  with  high-gabled  houses, 
each  story  jutting  beyond  the  lower,  carved 
from  pavement  to  ridge  like  an  Indian 
jewel  casket,  and  all  bedecked  w^ith  flaming 
colour  and  burnished  gold-leaf.  Below  is 
the  stream  and  eddy  of  human  life;  crafts- 
men in  the  red  and  blue  and  yellow  of  their 
guild  liveries,  slow-pacing  merchants  and 
burghers  in  furred  gowns  of  cramoisy  and 
Flemish  wool  and  gold-woven  Eastern  silks ; 
scholars  in  tippet  and  gown,  youths  in 
slashed  doublets  and  gay  hose,  grey  friars 
and  black  and  brown,  with  a  tonsured  monk 
or  two,  and  perhaps  a  purple  prelate,  at- 
tended, and  made  way  for  with  deep  rever- 
ence. Threading  the  narrow  road  rides  a 
great  lady  on  a  gaily  caparisoned  palfrey, 
with  an  officious  squire  in  attendance,  or 
perhaps  a  knight  in  silver  armour,  crested 
wonderfully,  his  emblazoned  shield  hang- 
ing at  his  saddle-bow,  —  living  colour  mix- 

[2] 


PROLOGUE 

ing  and  changing  between  leaning  walls  of 
still  colour  and  red  gold. 

Here  a  stream  or  canal  cuts  the  houses 
in  halves,  a  quay  with  gay  booths  and  mar- 
kets of  vari-coloured  vegetables  along  one 
side,  walls  of  pink  brick  or  silvery  stone 
on  the  other,  jutting  oriels  hanging  over 
the  stream,  and  high,  curved  bridges,  each 
with  its  painted  shrine,  crossing  here  and 
there,  with  gaudy  boats  shoving  along  un- 
derneath. Here  a  square  opens  out,  ringed 
with  carved  houses,  —  a  huge  guild  hall  on 
one  side,  with  its  dizzy  watch-tower  where 
hang  the  great  alarum  bells;  long  rows  of 
Gothic  arches,  tall  mullioned  windows,  and 
tiers  and  ranges  of  niched  statues  all  gold 
and  gules  and  azure,  painted  perhaps  by 
Messer  Jan  Van  Eyck  or  Messer  Hans 
Memling.  In  the  centre  is  a  spurting  foun- 
tain with  its  gilt  figures  and  chiselled  para- 
pet, and  all  around  are  market  booths  with 
bright  awnings  where  you  may  buy  strange 
things  from  far  lands,  chaffering  with  dark 
men  from  Syria  and  Saracen  Spain  and 
Poland  and  Venice  and  Muscovy. 

And  everywhere,  tall  in  the  midst  of  tall 
towers  and  spires,  vast,  silvery,  light  as  air 
yet  solemn  and  dominating,  the  great  shape 

[3] 


WALLKD    TOWNS 

of  the  Cathedral,  buttressed,  pinnacled, 
beautiful  with  rose  windows  and  innu- 
merable figures  of  saints  and  angels  and 
prophets. 

There  is  no  smoke  and  no  noxious  gas; 
the  wind  that  sweeps  over  the  roofs  and 
around  the  delicate  spires  is  as  clean  and 
clear  as  it  is  in  the  mountains;  the  painted 
banners  flap  and  strain,  and  the  trees  in  the 
gardens  rustle  beneath.  There  is  no  sound 
except  human  sound  ;  the  stir  and  murmur  of 
passing  feet,  the  pleasant  clamour  of  voices, 
the  muffled  chanting  of  cloistered  nuns  in 
some  veiled  chapel,  the  shrill  cry  of  street 
venders  and  children,  and  the  multitudi- 
nous bells  sounding  for  worship  in  mon- 
astery or  church  and,  at  dawn  and  noon  and 
evening,  the  answering  clangour  of  each  to 
all  for  the  Angelus. 

And  from  the  farther  side  of  the  walls  a 
wide  country  of  green  and  gold  and  the  far, 
thin  blue  of  level  horizon  or  distant  moun- 
tains. There  are  no  slums  and  no  suburbs 
and  no  mills  and  no  railway  yards;  the 
green  fields  and  the  yellow  grain,  the  or- 
chards and  gardens  and  thickets  of  trees 
sweep  up  to  the  very  walls,  slashed  by  wind- 
ing white  roads.  Alongside  the  river,  limpid 

[4] 


PROLOGUE 

and  unstained,  are  mills  with  slow  wheels 
dripping  quietly,  there  where  the  great 
bridge  with  its  seven  Gothic  arches  and  its 
guarding  towers  curves  in  a  long  arc  from 
shore  to  shore.  Far  away  is  perhaps  a  grey 
monastery  with  its  tall  towers,  and  on  the 
hill  a  greyer  castle  looming  out  of  the 
woods.  Along  the  road  blue-clad  peasants 
come  and  go  with  swaying  flocks  of  sheep 
and  fowl  and  cattle.  Here  are  dusty  pil- 
grims with  staff  and  wallet  and  broad  hats, 
pursy  merchants  on  heavy  horses  with  har- 
ness of  red  velvet  and  gold  embroidery; 
a  squadron  of  mounted  soldiers  with  lances 
and  banners,  and  perhaps  my  Lord  Bishop 
on  his  white  mule,  surrounded  by  his  re- 
tainers, and  on  progress  to  his  see  city  from 
some  episcopal  visitation;  perhaps  even  a 
plumed  and  visored  knight  riding  on  quest 
or  to  join  a  new  Crusade  to  the  Holy  Land. 
Colour  ever3rwhere,  in  the  fresh  country, 
in  the  carven  houses,  in  gilded  shrines  and 
flapping  banners,  in  the  clothes  of  the  people 
like  a  covey  of  vari-coloured  tropical  birds. 
No  din  of  noise,  no  pall  of  smoke,  but 
fresh  air  blowing  within  the  city  and  with- 
out, even  through  the  narrow  streets,  none 
too  clean  at  best,  but  cleaner  far  than  they 

[5] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

were  to  be  thereafter  and   for  many  long 
centuries  to  come. 

Such  was  any  walled  town  in  the  fif- 
teenth century,  let  us  say  in  France  or 
England  or  Italy,  in  Flanders  or  Spain  or 
the  Rhineland.  Carcassonne,  Rothenbourg, 
San  Gimignano,  Oxford,  ghosts  of  the  past, 
arouse  hauntings  of  memory  today,  but  they 
tell  us  little,  for  the  colour  is  gone,  and  the 
stillness  and  the  clean  air.  Ghosts  they  are 
and  not  living  things;  and  life,  colour,  clar- 
ity, these  were  the  outward  marks  of  the 
Walled  Towns  of  the  Middle  Ages. 


"  It  was  not  a  pretty  station  where 
McCann  found  himself,  and  he  glared  ill- 
naturedly  around  with  restless,  aggressive 
eyes.  The  brick  walls,  the  cheaply  grained 
doors  bearing  their  tarnished  legends, 
"  Gents,"  "  Ladies,"  ''  Refreshment  Saloon," 
the  rough  raftered  roof  over  the  tracks, — 
everything  was  black  and  grimy  with  years 
of  smoke,  belching  even  now  from  the  big 
locomotive,  and  gathering  like  an  ill-con- 
ditioned thunder-cloud  over  the  mob  of 
scurrying,  pushing  men  and  women,  a  mob 
that   swelled   and   scattered   constantly   in 

[6] 


PROLOGUE 

fretful  confusion.  A  hustling  business-man 
with  a  fat,  pink  face  and  long  sandy  whis- 
kers, his  silk  hat  cocked  on  one  side  in 
grotesque  assumption  of  jauntiness,  tripped 
over  the  clay-covered  pick  of  a  surly  la- 
bourer, red  of  face  and  sweaty,  blue  of 
overalls  and  mud-coloured  of  shirt,  and  as 
he  stumbled  over  the  annoying  implement 
scowled  coarsely,  and  swore,  with  his  cigar 
between  his  teeth. 

''  Ragged  and  grimy  children,  hardly  old 
enough  to  walk,  sprawled  and  scrambled 
on  the  dirty  platform,  and  as  McCann 
hurried  by,  a  five-year-old  cursed  shrilly  a 
still  more  youthful  little  tough,  who  an- 
swered in  kind.  Vulgar  theatre-bills  in  rank 
reds  and  yellows  flaunted  on  the  cindery 
walls;  discarded  newpapers,  banana  skins, 
cigar  butts,  and  saliva  were  ground  together 
vilely  under  foot  by  the  scuffling  mob.  Dirt, 
meanness,  ugliness  everywhere  —  in  the 
unhappy  people  no  less  than  in  their 
surroundings.  .  .  . 

"The  prospect  was  not  much  better  out- 
side than  in.  The  air  was  thick  with  fine 
white  dust,  and  dazzling  with  fierce  sunlight. 
On  one  side  was  a  wall  of  brick  tenements, 
with  liquor  saloons,  cheap  groceries,  and  a 

[7] 


WALLKD   TOWNS 

fish-market  below,  all  adding  their  mite  to 
the  virulence  of  the  dead,  stifling  air.  Above, 
men  in  dirty  shirt-sleeves  lolled  out  of  the 
grimy  windows,  where  long  festoons  of 
half-washed  clothes  drooped  sordidly.  On 
the  other  side,  gangs  of  workmen  were  hur- 
riedly repairing  the  ravages  of  a  fire  that 
evidently  had  swept  clear  a  large  space 
in  its  well-meant  but  ineffectual  attempts 
at  purgation.  Gaunt  black  chimneys 
wound  with  writhing  gas-pipes,  tottering 
fragments  of  wall  blistered  white  on  one 
side,  piles  of  crumbling  bricks  where  men 
worked  sullenly  loading  blue  carts,  mingled 
with  new  work,  where  the  walls,  girdled 
with  yellow  scaffolding,  were  rising  higher, 
uglier  than  before;  the  plain  factory  w^alls 
with  their  rows  of  square  windows  less 
hideous  by  far  than  those  buildings  where 
some  ignorant  contractor  was  trying  by  the 
aid  of  galvanized  iron  to  produce  an  effect 
of  tawdry,  lying  magnificence.  Dump- 
carts,  market-waggons,  shabby  hacks, 
crawled  or  scurried  along  in  the  hot  dust. 
A  huge  dray  loaded  with  iron  bars  jolted 
over  the  granite  pavement  with  a  clanging, 
clattering  din  that  was  maddening.  In  fact, 
none  of  the  adjuncts  of  a  thriving,  progres- 

[8] 


PROLOGUE 

sive  town  were  absent,  so  far  as  one  could 
see.  .  .  . 

"The  carriage  threaded  its  way  through 
the  roaring  crowd  of  vehicles,  passing  the 
business  part  of  the  city,  and  entering  a  tract 
given  over  to  factories,  hideous  blocks  of 
barren  brick  and  shabby  clapboards, 
through  the  open  windows  of  which  came 
the  brain-killing  whir  of  heavy  machinery, 
and  hot  pufTs  of  oily  air.  Here  and  there 
would  be  small  areas  between  the  buildings 
where  foul  streams  of  waste  from  some 
factory  of  cheap  calico  would  mingle  dirt- 
ily with  pools  of  green,  stagnant  water,  the 
edges  barred  with  stripes  of  horrible  pinks 
and  purples  where  the  water  had  dried 
under  the  fierce  sun.  All  around  lay  piles 
of  refuse,  —  iron  hoops,  broken  bottles,  bar- 
rels, cans,  old  leather  stewing  and  fuming 
in  the  dead  heat,  and  everywhere  escape- 
pipes  vomiting  steam  in  spurts.  Over  it 
all  was  the  roar  of  industrial  civilization. 
McCann  cast  a  pitying  look  at  the  pale, 
dispirited  figures  passing  languidly  to  and 
fro  in  the  midst  of  the  din  and  the  foul 
air,  and  set  his  teeth  closely. 

"  Presently  they  entered  that  part  of  the 
city  where  live  the  poor,  they  who  work 

[9] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

in  the  mills,  when  they  are  not  on  strike, 
or  the  mills  are  not  shut  down,  —  as  barren 
of  trees  or  grass  as  the  centre  of  the  city, 
the  baked  grey  earth  trodden  hard  bet^veen 
the  crowded  tenements  painted  lifeless 
greys,  as  dead  in  colour  as  the  clay  about 
them.  Children  and  goats  crawled  starv- 
edly  around  or  huddled  in  the  hot  shadow 
of  the  sides  of  the  houses.  This  passed,  and 
then  came  the  circle  of  "suburban  resi- 
dences," as  crowded  almost  as  the  tottering 
tenements,  but  with  green  grass  around 
them.  Frightful  spectacles  these, — "Queen 
Anne"  and  "Colonial"  vagaries  painted 
lurid  colours,  and  frantic  in  their  cheap 
elaboration.  Between  two  affected  little 
cottages  painted  orange  and  green  and  with 
round  towers  on  their  corners,  stood  a  new 
six-story  apartment-house  with  vulgar  front 
of  brown  stone,  "  Romanesque  "  in  style,  but 
with  long  flat  sides  of  cheap  brick.  McCann 
caught  the  name  on  the  big  white  board 
that  announced  "Suites  to  let."  "Hotel 
Plantagenet,"  and  grinned  savagely. 

"Then,  at  last,  even  this  region  of  specu- 
lative horrors  came  to  an  end,  giving  place 
to  a  wide  country  road  that  grew  more  and 
more  beautiful  as  they  left  the  town  far 
[lo] 


PROLOGUE 

behind.  McCann's  eyebrows  were  knotted 
in  a  scowl.  The  ghastly  nonsense,  like  a 
horrible  practical  joke,  that  the  city  had 
been  to  him,  excited,  as  it  always  did,  all 
the  antagonism  within  his  rebellious  nature. 
Slowly  and  grimly  he  said  to  himself,  yet 
half  aloud,  in  a  tone  of  deliberation,  as 
though  he  were  cursing  solemnly  the  town 
he  had  left:  'I  hope  from  my  soul  that  I 
may  live  to  see  the  day  when  that  damned 
city  will  be  a  desolate  wilderness;  when 
those  chimneys  shall  rise  smokeless;  when 
those  streets  shall  be  stony  valleys  between 
grisly  ridges  of  fallen  brick;  when  Nature 
itself  shall  shrink  from  repairing  the  evil 
that  man  has  wrought;  when  the  wild  birds 
shall  sweep  widely  around  that  desolation 
that  they  may  not  pass  above;  when  only 
rats  and  small  snakes  shall  crawl  though  the 
ruin  of  that  "  thriving  commercial  and 
manufacturing  metropolis";  when  the  very 
name  it  bore  in  the  days  of  its  dirty  glory 
shall  have  become  a  synonym  for  horror 
and  despair!'  Having  thus  relieved  him- 
self he  laughed  softly,  and  felt  better."* 

*  "The  Decadent,"  1893. 


[11] 


WHAT  is  the  way  out?  The  question 
that  was  universal  during  the  war, 
^'How  has  this  thing  come?" 
gives  place  to  the  other  that  is  no  less 
poignant  and  no  less  universal,  "What  is  the 
way  out?"  There  must  be  a  way;  this  coil  of 
uttermost  confusion  must  be  solvable,  must 
be  solved — //  only  we  knew  the  way!  There 
can  be  no  going  back,  of  that  we  are  sure, 
and  the  industry  of  the  serious-minded  men, 
busy  with  set  faces  and  a  brave  optimism, 
in  their  cheerful  efforts  to  restore  the  old 
course  of  events  after  an  accidental  inter- 
lude, fills  us  with  a  kind  of  shame  that 
people  who  have  lived  through  the  war 
should  have  learned  so  little  both  of  the  war 
and  from  it.  Four  years  have  ended  the 
work  of  four  centuries  and  —  there  is  no 
going  back.  "Finis"  has  been  written  at 
the  end  of  a  long  episode  and  there  is  no 
way  by  which  we  can  knit  together  again 
the  strands  that  are  severed  forever.    There 

[13] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

is  even  less  desire  than  ability.  It  does  not 
show  very  well  in  the  red  light  of  war,  that 
act  in  the  great  world-drama  that  opened 
with  the  dissolution  of  Mediaevalism  and 
the  coming  of  the  Renaissance;  that  de- 
veloped through  the  Reformation,  the  revo- 
lutions of  the  eighteenth  century  and  the 
sequent  industrialism,  to  its  climax  and 
catastrophe  in  war.  There  is  little  in  it  we 
would  have  back  if  we  could,  but  the  un- 
stable equilibrium  in  which  we  hang  for  the 
moment,  poised  between  reactionism  and 
universal  anarchy,  cannot  last;  already  the 
balance  is  inclining  towards  chaos,  and  in 
the  six  months  that  will  intervene  between 
the  writing  of  this  and  its  publication  it 
may  very  well  be  that  the  decision  of  inertia 
will  be  made  and  the  plunge  effected  that 
will  bring  us  down  into  that  unintelligent 
repetition  of  history  now  so  clearly  indi- 
cated in  Russia,  Austria,  Germany.  We 
can  neither  return  nor  remain  but  —  would 
we  go  on,  at  least  along  the  lines  that  are 
at  present  indicated?  Are  we  tempted  by 
the  savage  and  stone-age  ravings  and  raven- 
ings  of  Bolshevism?  Have  we  any  inclina- 
tion towards  that  super-imperialism  of  the 
pacifist-internationalist-Israelitish  "League 

[14] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

of  Free  Nations"  that  comes  in  such  ques- 
tionable shape?  Does  State  Socialism  with 
all  its  materialistic  mechanisms  appeal  to 
us?  Other  alleviation  is  not  offered  and 
in  these  we  can  see  no  encouragement. 

It  is  the  eternal  dilemma  of  the  Two  Al- 
ternatives, which  is  nevertheless  no  more 
than  a  vicious  sophism:  "Either  you  will 
take  this  or  you  must  have  that,"  the  star- 
ling-cry of  partizan  politics  by  which 
"democracies"  have  lived.  In  all  human 
affairs  there  are  never  only  two  alternatives, 
there  is  always  a  third  and  sometimes  more; 
but  this  unrecognized  alternative  never 
commands  that  popular  leadership  which 
"carries  the  election,"  and  it  does  not  ap- 
peal to  a  public  that  prefers  the  raw  obvi- 
ousness of  the  extremes.  Yet  it  is  the  third 
alternative  that  is  always  the  right  one, 
except  when  the  God-made  leaders,  the 
time  having  come  for  a  new  upward  rush 
of  the  vital  force  in  society,  put  themselves 
in  the  vanguard  of  the  new  advance  and 
lift  the  world  with  them,  as  it  were  by  main 
force.  Reactionism  or  Bolshevism:  "Un- 
der which  king,  Bezonian?  Speak  or  die ! " 
We  are  told  that  the  old  world  of  before- 
the-war  must  be  restored  in  its  integrity  or 

[15] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

we  must  fall  a  victim  to  the  insane  anarchy 
of  a  proletariat  in  revolt,  and  for  many  of 
us  there  is  little  to  choose  between  the  two. 
We  have  seen  how  fragile,  artificial  and 
insecure  is  civilization,  how  instantly  and 
hopelessly  it  can  crumble  into  a  sort  of 
putrid  dissolution  the  moment  its  conven- 
tions are  challenged  and  the  ultimate  prin- 
ciples of  democracy  are  put  in  practice,  and 
we  do  not  like  it.  We  have  seen  Russia, 
Germany,  Hungary,  and  sporadic  but  dis- 
quieting examples  in  every  State,  no  matter 
how  conservative  it  may  be  or  how  success- 
ful in  a  first  stamping  out  of  the  flame.  On 
the  other  hand,  we  saw  the  triumph  of 
"Modern  Civilization"  in  the  twent\'-five 
years  preceding  the  Great  War,  and  as  we 
realize  now  what  it  was,  through  the  reve- 
lations it  has  made  of  itself  during  the  last 
five  years,  we  like  it  quite  as  little  as  the 
other.  We  see  it  now  as  an  impossible  far- 
rago of  false  values,  of  loud-mouthed  senti- 
mentality and  crude,  cold-blooded  practices; 
of  gross,  all-pervading  injustice  sicklied 
o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  smug  humanita- 
rianism;  a  democracy  of  form  that  was 
without  ideal  or  reality  in  practice;  im- 
perialism, materialism  and  the  quantitative 
[i6] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

standard.  Is  there  no  alternative  other  than 
this,  restored  in  its  unvarying  ugliness  of 
fact  and  of  manifestation,  or  the  imitative 
era  of  a  new  Dark  Ages  which  will  be 
brought  to  pass  by  the  new  hordes  of  Huns 
and  Vandals  that  again,  after  fifteen  cen- 
turies, menace  a  greater  Imperialism  than 
Rome  with  an  identical  fate?  There  is  a 
third  alternative;  there  may  be  more,  but 
the  one  which  makes  its  argument  for  ac- 
ceptance on  the  basis  of  history  and  experi- 
ence is  here  put  forward  for  consideration. 

In  three  books  already  published  in  this 
series  which  has  been  issued  from  time  to 
time  during  the  Great  War  —  "The  Nem- 
esis of  Mediocrity,"  "The  Great  Thousand 
Years"  and  "The  Sins  of  the  Fathers"  — I 
have  tried  to  determine  certain  of  the  causes 
which  led  to  the  tragical  debacle  of  modern 
civilization  at  the  very  moment  of  its  high- 
est supremacy;  and  now  while  mediocrity 
pitifully  struggles  to  meet  and  solve  an 
avalanche  of  problems  it  cannot  cope 
withal,  and  anarchy,  like  Alaric  and  Attila 
and  Genseric  at  the  head  of  their  united 
hosts,  beat  against  the  dissolving  barriers 
of  a  forlorn  and  impotent  and  discredited 
culture,  I  would  try  to  find  some  hints  of 

[17] 


WALLED    TOWNS 

the  saving  alternative,  and  if  possible  dis- 
cover some  way  out  of  the  deadly  impasse 
in  which  the  world  finds  itself. 

From  "The  Nemesis  of  Mediocrity"  it 
should  be  sufficiently  clear  that  I  do  not 
believe  that  any  mechanical  devices  what- 
ever will  serve  the  purpose:  neither  the 
buoyant  plan  to  "make  the  world  safe  for 
democracy,"  nor  any  extension  and  ampli- 
fication of  "democratic"  methods  onward 
to  woman's  suffrage  or  direct  legislation  or 
proletarian  absolutism  through  Russian 
Soviets,  nor  socialistic  panaceas  varying 
from  a  mild  collectivism  to  Marxism  and 
the  Internationale,  nor  a  league  of  nations 
and  an  imposing  but  impotent  "  Covenant," 
nor  even  a  world-wide  "  League  to  Enforce 
Peace."  We  have  heard  something  too  much 
of  late  of  peace,  and  not  enough  of  justice; 
peace  is  not  an  end  in  itself,  it  is  rather  a 
by-product  of  justice.  Through  justice  the 
world  can  attain  peace,  but  through  peace 
there  is  no  guaranty  that  justice  may  be 
achieved.  There  must  always  be  the  mate- 
rial enginery  through  the  operation  of 
which  the  ideal  is  put  into  practice,  but  in 
the  ideal  lies  the  determining  force,  whether 
for  good  or  evil,  and  by  just  so  far  as  this 

[i8] 


WALLED    TOWNS 

Is  right  In  its  nature  will  the  mechanism 
operate  for  good  ends.  The  best  agent  in 
the  world,  even  the  Catholic  Church  or 
the  American  Republic,  may  be  employed 
towards  evil  and  vicious  ends  whenever  the 
energizing  force  Is  of  a  nature  that  operates 
towards  darkness  and  away  from  the  light. 

I  have  tried  in  "  The  Sins  of  the  Fathers," 
to  prove  that  the  marks  of  degeneracy  and 
constructive  evil  in  the  modernism  that  went 
to  its  ruin  during  the  Great  War,  and  is 
now  accomplishing  its  destiny  in  the  even 
more  tragical  epoch  of  after-the-war,  are  its 
Imperialism,  its  materialism  and.  its  quan- 
titative standard  —  that  is  to  say,  its  accept- 
ance of  the  gross  aggregate  in  place  of  the 
unit  of  human  scale,  its  standard  of  values 
which  rejected  the  passion  for  perfection  in 
favour  of  the  numerical  equivalent,  and  its 
denial  of  spirit  as  a  reality  rather  than  a 
mere  mode  of  material  action  —  while  the 
only  salvation  for  society  is  to  be  found  in 
the  restoration,  in  all  things,  of  small  human 
units,  the  testing  of  all  things  by  value  not 
bulk,  and  the  acceptance  once  more  of  the 
philosophy  of  sacramentalism. 

It  would  be  possible,  I  suppose,  to  de- 
velop a  detailed  scheme  for  the  reconstruc- 

[19] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

tion  of  the  world  along  certain  definite 
lines  that  would  be  in  accordance  with 
these  principles,  but  the  question  would  at 
once  arise,  How  could  it  be  made  to  work? 
Frankly,  the  question  is  unanswerable 
except  by  a  categorical  negative.  The 
nineteenth-century  superstition  that  life 
proceeds  after  an  inevitable  system  of  pro- 
gressive evolution,  so  defiant  of  history,  so 
responsible  in  great  degree  for  the  many 
delusions  that  made  the  war  not  only  pos- 
sible but  inevitable,  finds  few  now  to  do  it 
honour.  The  soul  is  not  forever  engaged 
in  the  graceful  industry  of  building  for 
itself  ever  more  stately  mansions;  it  is  quite 
as  frequently  employed  in  defiling  and  de- 
stroying those  already  built,  and  in  sub- 
stituting the  hovel  for  the  palace.  It  is  not 
even,  except  at  infrequent  intervals,  de- 
sirous of  improving  its  condition.  As  a 
whole,  man  is  not  an  animal  that  is  eager  for 
enlightenment  that  it  may  follow  after  the 
right.  At  certain  crescent  periods  in  the 
long  process  of  history,  when  great  prophets 
and  leaders  are  raised  up,  it  is  forced,  even 
against  its  will,  to  follow  after  the  leaders 
when  once  the  prophets  have  been  consci- 
entiously stoned,  and  great  and  wonderful 
[20] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

things  result  —  Athens,  Rome,  Byzantium, 
Venice,  Sicily,  the  cities  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  Flanders,  Elizabethan  England  — 
but  the  untoward  exertion  is  its  own  exe- 
cutioner, and  always  society  sinks  back 
into  some  form  of  barbarism  from  whence 
all  is  to  be  begun  again. 

Nor  is  education  —  free,  universal,  secu- 
lar and  "efficient"  —  an  universal  panacea 
for  this  persistent  disease  of  backsliding;  it 
is  not  even  a  palliative  or  a  prophylactic. 
The  most  intensive  educational  period  ever 
known  had  issue  in  the  most  preposterous 
war  in  history,  initiated  by  the  most  highly 
and  generally  educated  of  all  peoples,  by 
them  given  a  new  content  of  disgrace  and 
savagery,  and  issuing  at  last  into  Bolshe- 
vism and  an  obscene  anarchy  that  would  be 
ridiculous  but  for  the  omnipresent  horror. 
And  the  same  is  true  both  of  industrialism 
and  democracy,  for  both  have  belied  the 
promises  of  their  instigators  and  have 
brought  in,  not  peace  and  plenty  and  lib- 
erty, but  universal  warfare,  outrageous 
poverty,  and  the  tyranny  of  the  ignorant 
and  the  unfit. 

Before  the  revelations  of  war,  while  the 
curious  superstitions  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 

[21] 


WALLKD   TOWNS 

tury  were  still  in  vogue,  it  was  widely  held 
that  evolution,  education  and  democracy 
were  irresistible,  and  that  progress  from  then 
on  must  be  continuous  and  by  arithmetical 
if  not  geometrical  progression.  When  the 
war  came  and  the  revelations  began  to  un- 
fold themselves,  it  was  held  with  equal  com- 
prehensiveness that  even  if  our  civilization 
had  been  an  illusion,  our  trinity  of  mecha- 
nistic saviours  but  a  bundle  of  broken  reeds, 
the  war  itself  would  prove  a  great  regener- 
ative agency,  and  that  out  of  its  fiery  purga- 
tion would  issue  forth  a  new  spirit  that 
would  redeem  the  world.  It  is  a  fair  ques- 
tion to  ask  whether  those  that  once  saw  this 
bow  of  promise  in  the  red  skies  have  found 
the  gold  at  the  rainbow's  end  or  are  now 
even  sure  the  radiance  itself  has  not  faded 
into  nothingness. 

Every  great  war  exhibits  at  least  two 
phenomena  following  on  from  its  end:  the 
falling  back  into  an  abyss  of  meanness, 
materialism  and  self-seeking,  with  the  swift 
disappearance  of  the  spiritual  exaltation 
developed  during  the  fight,  and  the  emer- 
gence sooner  or  later  of  isolated  personal- 
ities who  have  retained  the  ardour  of 
spiritual  regeneration,  who  seem  indeed  to 

[22] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

epitomize  it  within  themselves,  and  who 
struggle,  sometimes  with  success,  sometimes 
with  failure,  to  bring  the  mass  of  people 
back  to  their  lost  ideals  and  embody 
these  in  a  better  type  of  society.  Appar- 
ently success  or  failure  depends  on  whether 
the  particular  war  in  question  came  on  the 
rise  or  the  fall  of  the  rhythmical  curve  that 
conditions  all  history. 

At  the  present  moment  the  first  of  these 
two  phenomena  has  shown  itself.  Whether 
it  is  in  Russia  or  in  the  fragments  of  the  de- 
spoiled Central  Empires  where  the  ominous 
horror  of  Bolshevism  riots  in  a  carnival  of 
obscene  destruction,  or  in  the  governments 
and  "interests"  and  amongst  the  peoples 
of  the  Allies,  there  is  now,  corporately,  no 
evidence  of  anything  but  a  general  break- 
down of  ideals,  and  either  an  accelerating 
plunge  into  something  a  few  degrees  worse 
than  barbarism,  with  the  Dark  Ages  as  its 
inevitable  issue,  or  an  equally  fatal  return 
to  the  altogether  hopeless,  indeed  the  pes- 
tilential, standards  and  methods  of  the 
fruition  of  modernism  in  the  world-before- 
the-war.  The  new  warfare  is  between  these, 
the  malignant  old  Two  Alternatives;  fear 
of  one  encompasses  the  other,  and  in  each 

[23] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

case  all  that  is  done  is  with  the  terror  of 
Bolshevism  conditioning  all  on  the  one 
hand,  terror  of  reactionism  on  the  other. 
Expediency,  desperate  self-preservation,  is 
the  controlling  passion,  and  the  principles 
of  justice,  right  and  reason  are  no  longer 
operative. 

As  this  is  v^ritten  there  is  no  sure  indica- 
tion as  to  which  of  these  alternatives  is 
to  prevail,  but  it  is  for  the  moment  quite 
clearly  indicated  that  it  will  be  the  one  or 
the  other,  —  either  the  tyranny  of  the  de- 
graded, Bolshevism,  universal  anarchy, 
with  the  modernist  reversal  of  all  values 
succeeded  by  the  post-modernist  destruction 
of  all  values,  or  the  triumph  of  reaction, 
with  a  return  to  the  w^orld-before-the-war 
for  a  brief  period  of  profligate  excess  along 
all  materialistic,  intellectual  and  scientific 
lines  not  unlike  the  Restoration  period  of 
Charles  II,  with  the  same  ruin  achieved  in 
the  end  though  after  a  certain  interlude. 
And  yet  the  third  alternative  is  theoretically 
possible:  escape  from  the  Scylla  and  Cha- 
rybdis  of  error  through  the  opportune  de- 
velopment of  the  second  phenomenon,  the 
reasonable  certainty  of  which  is  indicated 
by  history — the  appearance  of  those  leaders 

[24] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

of  vision  and  power  who  had  been  gener- 
ated through  the  alchemy  of  war. 

That  in  the  end  they  will  come  we  need 
not  doubt,  but  in  the  meantime  an  errant 
world,  leaderless  and  ungoverned,  is  urged 
swiftly  on  towards  catastrophe  of  either 
one  sort  or  another,  nor  will  it  wait  the  com- 
ing of  the  indispensable  leaders.  It  is  not 
from  the  men  whose  potential  greatness  was 
perfected  and  revealed  by  war,  Cardinal 
Mercier,  for  example,  or  Marshal  Foch, 
great  leaders  absolutely  of  the  first  class, 
that  solution  is  to  be  sought,  for  in  their  age 
is  sufficient  inhibition.  It  is  rather  from 
those  whose  character  has  actually  been 
made  by  war,  youths  perhaps,  who  have 
fought  and  found,  either  in  the  armies  or 
the  navies  or  in  the  air,  or  even  in  some 
of  the  non-combatant  branches  of  the  Serv- 
ice. Boys  they  are  now,  perhaps,  in  years, 
but  into  them  has  been  poured  the  ener- 
gizing power  that  leads  to  mastership;  to 
them  is  given  the  first  fire  of  progressive 
revelation.  Somewhere,  in  the  still  active 
units,  on  the  way  back  to  their  homes  and  to 
civil  life,  or  already  mingled  in  the  activi- 
ties from  which  they  were  called  for  their 
great  testing,  are  those  who  sooner  or  later 

[25] 


WALLED    TOWNS 

will  find  themselves  the  leaders  of  the  quest 
for  a  new  life  for  the  world.  The  Divine 
finger-touch  has  been  granted  them,  the 
spark  of  inspiration  has  lightened  in  their 
souls,  but  seldom  is  the  generation  swift; 
it  may  be  years  before  it  is  elYected,  and 
meanwhile  only  the  Two  Alternatives 
remain. 

For  my  own  purpose  in  this  book,  per- 
haps indeed  so  far  as  society  itself  is  con- 
cerned, it  is  a  matter  of  indifference  which 
is  the  victor  in  the  fight  for  supremacy; 
the  ultimate  issue  will  be  the  same 
though  the  roads  are  various.  Universal 
beastliness  issuant  of  Russia,  or  universal 
materialism  redivivus,  the  conditions  of  life 
will  be  intolerable,  and  in  the  end  a  new 
thing  will  be  built  up  as  different  on  the  one 
hand  to  anarchy  as  on  the  other  it  is  dififer- 
ent  to  the  industrial-democratic-material- 
ist regime  of  the  immediate  past.  With  the 
former  we  are  assured  some  five  hundred 
years  not  unlike  those  that  followed  the  fall 
of  Rome;  with  the  latter  we  at  least  are 
given  the  respite  of  a  brief  Restoration,  dur- 
ing which  the  war-bred  potencies  may 
mature,  and  at  the  end  of  the  few  gross  years 
which  would  be  allotted  to  this  status  quo 
[26] 


WALLED    TOWNS 

^«/^-civilization,  become  operative  to  avert 
the  horror  of  a  recrudescent  Bolshevism. 
At  least  so  we  may  hope ;  on  the  other  hand 
it  may  be  doubted  whether,  after  all,  a  re- 
vived and  intensified  materialism  such  as 
that  which  the  reactionary  element  is  at- 
tempting, would  not  afford  an  even  less 
favourable  and  stimulating  soil  for  foster- 
ing the  possible  war-potentialities  than 
would  red  anarchy,  for  the  suffocating  qual- 
ities of  gross  luxuriance  are  sometimes  more 
fatal  than  the  desperate  sensations  of  danger, 
adversity  and  shame.  In  any  case,  the  im- 
mediate future  is  not  one  to  be  anticipated 
with  enthusiasm  or  confidence  and  we  shall 
do  well  to  consider  the  course  to  be  followed 
by  those  who  reject  the  Two  Alternatives 
and  refuse  to  have  any  part  in  either. 


[27] 


II 

IT  Is  not  my  intention  to  write  another  in 
the  long  list  of  Utopias  with  which 
man  has  amused  himself,  from  Plato  to 
H.  G.  Wells.  Where  the  preceding  vol- 
umes in  this  series  have  been  frankly  de- 
structive, I  would  make  this  volume  con- 
structive, if  only  by  suggestion.  It  is  in  no 
sense  a  programme,  it  is  still  less  an  effort  at 
establishing  an  ideal.  Let  us  call  it  "  a  way 
out,"  for  it  is  no  more  than  this ;  not  "  the  " 
way,  nor  yet  a  way  to  anything  approaching 
a  perfect  State,  still  less  a  perfect  condition 
of  life,  but  rather  a  possible  issue  out  of  a 
present  impasse  for  some  of  those  who,  as  I 
have  said,  peremptorily  reject  both  of  the 
intolerable  alternatives  now  ofTfered  them. 

What  I  have  to  propose  is  based  on  ac- 
ceptance, at  least  substantially,  of  the  criti- 
cisms of  modernism  that  appear  in  "The 
Nemesis  of  Mediocrity"  and  in  "The  Sins 
of  the  Fathers";  it  also  assumes  the  general 
accuracy  of  the  interpretation  of  history 

[28] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

attempted  in  "The  Great  Thousand  Years," 
and  the  estimate  of  certain  historic  religio- 
social  forces  therein  described.  To  those 
who  dissent  from  these  opinions  this  vol- 
ume will  contain  nothing  and  they  will  be 
well  advised  if  they  pursue  it  no  further. 
Since  it  is  written  for  those  who  have  done 
me  the  honour  to  read  these  previous  books, 
I  shall  not  try  to  epitomize  them  here,  as- 
suming as  I  do  a  certain  familiarity  with 
their  general  argument.  All  that  it  is 
necessary  to  say  is  that  the  assumption  is 
made  that  "modern  civilization"  was  es- 
sentially an  inferior  product;  that  it  could 
have  had  no  other  issue  than  precisely  such 
a  war  as  occurred ;  that  its  fundamental 
weaknesses  were  its  imperialism,  its  mate- 
rialism and  its  quantitative  standard;  that 
the  particular  type  of  "democracy"  for 
which  the  world  was  to  be  made  safe  was  and 
is  a  menace  to  righteous  society,  since  it  had 
lowered  and  reversed  all  standards,  estab- 
lished the  reign  of  the  venal,  the  incapable 
and  the  unfit,  and  had  destroyed  all  com- 
petent leadership  while  preventing  its  gen- 
eration, and  that  the  only  visible  hope  of 
recovery  lay  in  a  restoration  of  the  unit  of 
human  scale,  the  passion  for  perfection,  and 

[29] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

a  certain  form  of  philosophy  known  as  sac- 
ramcntalism,  with  the  precedents  of  the 
monastic  method  used  as  a  basis  of  opera- 
tion, and  the  whole  put  in  process  through 
the  leadership  of  great  captains  of  men 
such  as  always  in  the  past  have  accom- 
plished the  building  up  of  society  after 
cataclysms  similar  to  that  which  during  five 
years  has  brought  modernism  to  an  end. 

Society  is  no  longer  to  be  dealt  with  as  an 
unit,  nor  even  as  a  congeries  of  units;  it  is 
a  chaos,  both  as  a  whole  and  in  each  moiety 
thereof.  The  evolutionary  process,  if  it 
ever  existed,  is  now  inoperative,  and  some- 
thing more  nearly  approaching  devolution 
has  taken  its  place.  As  under  the  earlier 
assault  of  the  everlasting  barbarian  the 
great,  imperial  unity  of  Rome  broke  up 
into  minute  family  fragments,  and  as  the 
pseudo-unity  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire 
broke  up  into  a  myriad  of  heterogeneous 
states,  so  our  own  world,  both  political  and 
social,  is  deliquescing  into  its  elements,  and 
no  ingenious  mechanism,  however  cleverly 
devised,  can  arrest  the  process  for  more  than 
the  briefest  of  periods.  When  the  mech- 
anism breaks  down,  whether  it  is  a  year  or 
ten  years  hence,  the  interrupted  process  of 

[30] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

disintegration  will  continue  to  its  appointed 
end. 

Man  has  always  nursed  the  dream  of 
corporate  regeneration,  of  the  finding  or 
devising  of  some  method  or  mechanism 
whereby  society  as  a  whole  could  be  re- 
deemed en  bloc.  The  dream  has  engen- 
dered many  revolutions  but  the  results  have 
been  other  than  those  anticipated,  and  even 
these  unexpected  happenings  have  proved 
evanescent,  with  a  constant  return  to  the  old 
evils  and  abuses.  Persistently  the  world  as 
a  whole  refuses  regeneration.  Latterly  the 
ingenious  device  has  somewhat  superseded 
the  violent  changing  of  things,  and  democ- 
racy with  its  miscellaneous  spawn  of  doc- 
trinaire inventions,  industrialism  with  its 
facile  subterfuges  of  political  economy; 
evolution,  education,  socialism,  each  in  turn 
has  ofifered  itself  as  the  sovereign  elixir. 
The  war  has  quashed  the  major  part,  the 
following  ''peace"  is  dealing  with  the  re- 
mainder. The  last  device  of  all,  socialism, 
whether  of  the  Marxian  variety  or  of  the 
Fabian  sort,  is  now  the  most  discredited  of 
all,  for  Bolshevism  on  the  one  hand,  state 
ownership,  control,  or  management  of  in- 
dustry on  the  other,  have  both  proved,  the 

[31] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

one  intolerable,  the  other  a  bloody  synonym 
for  social  extinction. 

Yet  the  way  out  must  be  found  by  those 
for  whom  the  present  scheme  of  existence  is 
not  good  enough;  for  those  who  refuse  to 
go  back  to  the  pre-war  regime  or  on  to  the 
predicted  era  of  anarchy.  The  way  may 
be  found,  but  it  will  reveal  itself  not 
through  wide  and  democratic  social  proc- 
esses but  through  group  action  in  which 
the  units  are  few  in  number.  The  process 
will  be  one  of  withdrawal,  of  segregation, 
at  first  even  of  isolation;  but  if  this  really 
proves  to  be  the  right  way,  the  end  may  be, 
as  so  often  in  the  past,  a  centrifugal  action 
developing  from  one  originally  centripetal, 
with  an  ultimate  leavening  of  the  whole 
lump. 

It  may  be  remembered  that  in  ''The 
Great  Thousand  Years"  I  endeavoured  to 
demonstrate  the  vibratory  theory  of  history, 
whereby  the  life  of  society  is  conditioned 
by  a  rhythmical  wave  motion;  curves  rising 
and  descending,  inflexibly  though  with 
varying  trajectories,  the  falling  curve  meet- 
ing at  some  point  the  rising  curve  of  a  future 
coming  into  being,  the  crossing  points  form- 
ing the  nodes  of  history,  and  spacing  them- 

[32] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

selves  at  five-century  intervals  either  side 
the  birth  of  Christ,  or  the  year  i  A.  D.  In 
the  same  place  I  called  attention  to  the  cor- 
respondence in  time  (since  the  Christian 
era)  between  certain  periodic  manifestations 
of  spiritual  force,  identical  in  nature  though 
somewhat  varied  in  fashion,  and  these  nodal 
points;  that  is  to  say,  the  monastic  idea 
as  this  showed  itself  in  the  first,  sixth, 
eleventh  and  sixteenth  centuries.  This 
synchronism  may  be  graphically  explained 
thus,  the  thin  line  indicating  the  approxi- 
mate curve  of  social  development,  the 
shaded  line  the  monastic  manifestation: 


A  thelcurve:  of  civilization   B  thecurve  of  monasticism 


It  would  appear  from  this  that  now, 
while  the  next  nodal  point  is  possibly 
seventy-five  years  in  the  future,  the  next 
manifestations  of  monasticism  should  al- 
ready be  showing  itself.    The  curve  of  mod- 

[33] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

ernism  is  now  descending  as  precipitously 
as  did  that  of  Roman  Imperialism,  but 
already,  to  those  who  are  willing  to  see, 
there  are  indisputable  evidences  of  the 
rising  of  the  following  curve.  Whether 
this  is  to  emulate  in  lift  and  continuance  the 
curves  of  Mediaevalism  and  of  modernism, 
or  whether  it  is  to  be  but  a  poor  copy  of  the 
sag  and  the  low,  heavy  lift  of  the  Dark 
Ages,  is  the  question  that  man  is  to  deter- 
mine for  himself  during  the  next  two 
generations. 

Now  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  last  thirty- 
years  have  shown  an  altogether  astonishing 
recrudescence  of  the  monastic  spirit,  while 
already  the  war  has  added  enormously  to 
its  force  and  expansion.  Thus  far  it  has 
been  wholly  along  old-established  lines, 
which  was  to  be  expected ;  but  as  we  ap- 
proach nearer  and  nearer  to  the  next  nodal 
point  of  the  year  2000,  we  are  bound  to  see 
a  variant,  a  new  expression  of  the  inde- 
structible idea.  This  has  always  been  the 
case.  At  the  beginning  of  the  Christian 
era  the  impulse  was  personal,  the  individ- 
ual was  the  unit,  and  the  result  was  the  an- 
chorites and  hermits,  each  isolating  himself 
in  a  hidden  mountain  cave,  a  hut  in  the 

[34] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

desert  or,  if  his  fancy  took  this  eccentric,  on 
the  top  of  a  lonely  column,  like  St.  Simon 
Stylites.  With  St.  Benedict  the  group  be- 
came the  unit,  a  sort  of  artificial  family 
either  of  men  or  of  women,  as  the  case  might 
be.  He  himself  began  as  a  hermit  in  the 
cleft  of  a  far  mountain,  but  within  his  own 
lifetime  his  original  impulse  was  overrid- 
den and  the  new  communal  or  group  life 
came  into  being,  though  each  monastery 
or  convent  was  quite  autonomous  and  self- 
contained.  Five  centuries  later  (or  four, 
to  speak  more  exactly)  began  the  Cluniac 
reform,  which  was  followed  by  the  Cis- 
tercian movement,  and  here,  though  the  old 
Benedictine  mode  was  followed  at  first,  in 
a  brief  time  came  the  differentiation,  for 
now  all  the  houses  of  one  order  were  united 
under  a  centralizing  and  coordinating 
force.  Here  we  have  the  State  as  the  par- 
allel of  the  new  scheme.  Latest  of  all,  in 
other  five  centuries,  came  still  a  new  model, 
the  army,  with  the  Society  of  Jesus  as  its 
perfect  exponent.  So  we  have  at  almost 
exact  five-century  intervals  four  models 
of  monasticism:  the  individual,  the  family 
the  State  and  the  army.  A  fifth  is  now  due; 
what  will  be  its  form? 

[35] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

It  will,  I  think,  be  one  in  which  the 
human  family  is  made  the  unit.  It  will  not 
supersede  the  older  modes  but  supplement 
them,  for  the  monks,  canons-regular  and 
friars,  of  the  old  tradition  and  the  old  line, 
will  be  as  necessary  then  as  ever;  instead  it 
will  be  an  amplification  of  the  indestructible 
idea,  fitted  to,  and  developing  from,  the 
new  conditions  which  confront  society.  In 
addition  to  the  groups  of  either  men  or 
women,  living  in  a  community  life  apart, 
and  vowed  to  poverty,  celibacy  and  obedi- 
ence, there  will  be  groups  of  natural  fami- 
lies, father,  mother  and  children,  entering 
into  a  communal  but  not  by  any  means 
"communistic"  life,  within  those  Walled 
Towns  they  will  create  for  themselves,  in 
the  midst  of  the  world  but  not  of  it,  where 
the  conditions  of  life  will  be  determined 
after  such  sort  as  will  make  possible  that 
real  and  wholesome  and  joyful  and  simple 
and  reasonable  living  that  has  long  been 
forbidden  by  the  conditions  of  modern 
civilization. 

Let  me  explain  at  once  that  I  have  noth- 
ing in  mind  resembling  in  the  least  the 
communistic  schemes  of  Pourier,  Owen^ 
George;  of  the  Shakers,  the  Concord  en- 

[36] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

thusiasts  or  their  ilk.  In  these  cases  it  was 
always  the  unnatural  element  of  commu- 
nism that  was  their  undoing,  and  in  the 
Walled  Towns  of  the  new  era  the  preser- 
vation of  individuality^,  of  private  property, 
of  family  integrity,  would  be  of  necessity 
a  fundamental  principle.  Many  evils  and 
abuses  have  grown  up  around  all  these,  but 
1  cannot  claim  that  I  am  one  of  those  (in 
spite  of  its  wide  popularity  and  almost 
universal  acceptance)  who  hold  tenaciously 
to  the  belief  that  the  only  way  to  get  rid  of 
the  dust  is  to  burn  down  the  house,  or  that 
the  only  way  to  correct  a  child's  faults  is  to 
kill  it.  Rather  I  incline  to  the  somewhat 
outworn  method  of  reform  without  de- 
struction, and  I  lean  to  the  opinion  that 
there  are  enough  others  of  like  convictions 
to  make  possible  the  creation  of  a  certain 
number  of  Walled  Towns  that  the  experi- 
ment may  be  put  into  effect,  since  mani- 
festly it  is  no  longer  possible  in  society  as 
a  whole. 

The  method  would  be  simple,  the  proc- 
ess carried  out  quietly,  and  preferably  in 
several  places  at  once.  A  certain  commu- 
nity of  interest  must  be  presupposed,  but 
this  would  hardly  extend  beyond  substantial 

[37] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

unity  in  religion,  in  philosophy  and  in  a 
revolt  against  the  industrial-democratic- 
imperialist  scheme  of  society  which  has 
dominated  Europe  and  America  since  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth-century.  There 
can  be  no  sane  and  wholesome  society  in 
the  future  where  there  is  not  an  univer- 
sally accepted  religion  of  perfectly  definite 
form,  a  clear,  logical  and  convincing 
philosophy  of  life,  and  a  social  system 
diametrically  opposed  to  that  which  was 
current  before  the  war  and  is  now  striving 
desperately  for  a  restoration.  As  the  unity 
of  religion  has  been  shattered  since  the 
sixteenth  century,  the  creators  of  the  Walled 
Towns  may  very  well  be  divided  into  in- 
dividual groups,  so  far  as  religion  is  con- 
cerned. I  can  imagine  Roman  Catholics 
forming  the  nucleus  of  one,  Episcopalians 
another,  and  it  may  be  there  are  among 
the  Protestant  denominations  those  who 
would  be  led  along  the  same  lines.  The 
essential  point  is  the  fundamental  necessity 
for  a  vital  and  common  religion  among 
those  who  go  forward  to  the  building  of 
the  new  social  units.  The  same  is  true  of 
philosophy,  for  this  and  religion  can  never 
be  separated  except  under  pain  of  the  re- 

[38] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

suits  that  have  followed  the  severance  in 
the  fifteenth  century,  and  the  workings  of 
a  world  void  of  any  real  philosophy  ever 
since.  If  there  is  any  philosophy  except 
sacramentalism  which  is  at  the  same  time 
intellectually  satisfying  in  a  perfectly 
complete  degree,  consonant  with  the 
proved  results  of  scientific  investigation 
and  thought,  and  sufficiently  dynamic  as  a 
controlling  force  in  life,  I  am  not  ac- 
quainted with  it.  If  such  a  thing  exists,  it 
might  serve  its  turn,  but  false  philosophies 
such  as  materialism,  evolutionism.  Christian 
Science  and  pragmatism  are  not  working 
substitutes  for  a  real  philosophy  such  as 
that  of  Hugh  of  St.  Victor,  Duns  Scotus 
or  St.  Thomas  Aquinas.  As  for  the  social 
vision,  there  must  be  not  only  the  negative 
quality  of  revolt  but  the  positive  quality 
of  construction.  It  is  not  sufficient  to  hate 
the  tawdry  and  iniquitous  fabrications  of 
the  camp-followers  of  democracy;  the  gross 
industrial-financial  system  of  "big  busi- 
ness" and  competition,  with  the  capital 
versus  labour  antithesis  it  has  bred.  It  is  not 
enough  to  curse  imperialism  and  material- 
ism and  the  quantitative  standard.  There 
must  be  some  vision  of  the  plausible  sub- 

[39] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

stitutc,  and  while  this  must  determine  it- 
self slowly,  through  many  failures,  and 
will  in  the  end  appear  as  a  by-product  of 
the  spiritual  regeneration  that  must  follow 
once  the  real  religion  and  a  right  philoso- 
phy are  achieved,  there  must  be  a  starting 
somewhere. 

Personally,  I  should  say  that  for  thi3 
starting  point  we  might  fix  on  Justice 
(whichever  way  the  sword  cuts)  as  the  first 
consideration;  Charity  (or  rather  Caritas — 
the  Latin  is  more  exact)  follows  close  after, 
or  even  goes  side  by  side.  So  do  the  other 
Cardinal  Virtues;  but  who  has  not  invoked 
them  in  support  of  every  reform,  whether 
it  was  of  God  or  the  devil?  They  fall  as 
lightly  from  the  lips  of  Marat  or  Lenine 
as  from  thoseof  Plato,  Dante  or  Sir  Thomas 
More;  they  may  be  assumed.  There  are, 
however,  certain  less  abstract  propositions 
which  it  seems  to  me  must  serve  at  least  as 
a  trial  basis;  these,  for  example: 

Power  is  Divine  in  its  origin,  since  it  is 
an  attribute  of  Divinity,  and  its  exercise  is 
by  Divine  permission.  It  follows,  therefore, 
that,  as  was  held  during  the  Middle  Ages, 
no  man  or  group  of  men,  neither  king  nor 
boss  nor  parliament  nor  soviet,  has  any  au- 

[40] 


WALLED    TOWNS 

thority  to  exercise  power  after  a  wrong 
fashion  or  to  govern  ill. 

Society  exists  through  cooperation,  not 
through  competition;  the  latter  must  there- 
fore be  abolished,  though  this  does  not 
imply  the  destruction  of  emulation,  which 
is  quite  a  different  thing. 

All  men  are  equal  before  God  and  the 
Law  but  not  otherwise.  Privilege,  in  the 
sense  of  immunity  or  of  special  opportunity 
without  corresponding  obligations  is  ab- 
horrent, but  justice,  self-interest  and  the 
common  good  demand  that  those  who  can 
do  a  thing  well  should  do  it,  those  who 
cannot  should  be  debarred.  This  applies 
to  government  or  legislation  or  the  exercise 
of  the  electoral  franchise,  as  well  as  to 
education,  medicine  or  the  arts. 

In  industry  of  all  kinds,  production 
should  be  for  use,  not  profit.  The  paying 
of  money  for  the  use  of  money  is  question- 
able, both  from  the  standpoint  of  morals 
and  of  expediency.  It  may  prove  that  the 
Church  was  right  during  the  Middle  Ages 
in  calling  it  all  usury,  and  that  John  Calvin, 
when  he  declared  in  its  favour,  was  guilty 
of  a  crime.  In  any  case,  the  return  on  capi- 
tal should  be  the  fixed  charge  and  small  in 

[41] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

amount;  the  margin  of  profit  belongs  to 
those  who  produce,  whether  they  work 
with  their  brains  or  their  hands.  The  hold- 
ing of  land  for  dwelling  and  cultivation  is 
essential  for  every  family  in  any  wholesome 
society;  this  land  should  be  sufficient  to 
support  the  family  at  necessity.  Land  be- 
longs to  the  community,  but  tenure  thereof 
on  the  part  of  families  or  individuals  is 
perpetual,  and  the  land  may  be  bequeathed 
or  transferred  so  long  as  the  rent  or  taxes 
are  duly  paid. 

Every  community  is  in  duty  bound  to 
guard  its  own  integrity  by  determining  its 
own  membership,  but  none  once  admitted 
can  be  expelled  except  by  process  of  law. 

No  society  can  endure  when  a  false 
standard  of  comparative  values  exists.  At 
the  present  time  about  half  the  working 
male  population  in  Europe  and  America 
is  engaged  in  producing  or  marketing  things 
which  add  nothing  to  the  virtue,  the  real 
welfare,  or  the  joy  in  life  of  man,  and  for 
the  most  part  he  would  be  better  ofif  without 
them.  There  are  as  many  directly  or  in- 
directly engaged  in  getting  rid  of  these 
essentially  useless  products  as  there  are  in 
their   manufacture.     None   of   these   men 

[42] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

produces  anything,  and  they  must  be  fed, 
housed  and  clothed  by  those  who  do.  It 
costs  as  much  to  market  the  surplus  product 
as  it  does  to  bring  it  into  existence,  and  the 
consumer  pays.  The  result  is  that  "  labour- 
saving"  machines  have  vastly  increased  the 
burden  of  labour;  the  surplus  product  de- 
mands markets,  and  exploitation  both  of 
labour  and  of  markets  becomes  the  founda- 
tion of  industrial  civilization.  The  modern 
world  has  become  a  perfectly  artificial  fab- 
ric of  complicated  indebtedness,  the  magni- 
tude and  ramifications  of  which  are  so  enor- 
mous that  nothing  preserves  it  but  public 
confidence.  Were  this  removed,  or  even 
shaken  seriously,  the  whole  fabric  would  col- 
lapse in  universal  bankruptcy,  a  situation 
even  now  indicated  for  all  Europe,  as  may  be 
seen  in  Mr.  Vanderlip's  remarkable  book 
"What  has  Happened  to  Europe."  It  is 
to  correct  this  silly  artifice,  to  obliterate  this 
preposterous,  wrong-headed  and  insecure 
way  of  life,  that  sooner  or  later  men,  women 
and  children  will  seek  refuge  in  the  Walled 
Towns  they  will  build,  as  they  have  gone, 
time  out  of  mind,  into  the  monasteries  and 
convents  of  religion  which  they  built  for 
their  earlier  refuge. 

Us] 


Ill 

IN  the  vision  that  I  see  of  the  coming 
Walled  Towns,  they  may  rise  any- 
where, given  only  that  there  is  sufficient 
arable  land  near  L^  .  a  river  that  will  afford 
power,  and  a  site  with  some  elements  of 
natural  beauty.  They  will  grow  from  small 
beginnings,  —  a  fewfamilies  and  individuals 
at  first,  though  the  number  must  be  sufficient 
to  establish  the  identity  and  the  autonomy 
of  the  group.  The  members  will  be  those 
for  whom  the  present  type  of  social  life  is 
not  good  enough,  either  in  fact  or  in 
promise;  men  and  women  who  think  alike 
on  a  few  essential  matters,  who  still  main- 
tain the  standard  of  comparative  values  of 
the  world  before  modernism,  and  who  wish 
to  live  simply,  as  happily  as  possible,  and 
to  restore  the  lost  ideals  of  justice,  honour, 
chivalry  and  brotherly  cooperation.  While 
fulfilling  all  their  obligations  to  govern- 
ment as  it  is  now  established  —  paying  taxes, 
rendering  military  service  and  jury  duty, 

[44] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

and  voting  in  those  occasional  cases  when 
there  is  a  remote  chance  of  its  doing  any 
good  —  they  will  yet  set  up  for  themselves 
a  community,  self-supporting  in  so  far  as 
this  is  possible,  with  its  own  government, 
its  educational  system,  its  social  organism 
and  its  regulations  controlling  the  mode  of 
life  of  its  members  to  the  extent  that  is 
necessary  to  carry  ojat  the  fundamental 
principles  of  the  association. 

The  phrase  "  Walled  Towns "  is  sym- 
bolical only;  it  does  not  imply  the  great 
ramparts  of  masonry  with  machicolated 
towers,  moats,  drawbridges  and  great  city 
gates  such  as  once  guarded  the  beautiful 
cities  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  might,  of 
course;  there  is  no  reason  why  a  city  should 
not  so  protect  itself  from  the  world  without, 
if  its  fancy  led  in  this  pictorial  direction; 
and  after  all,  anyone  who  has  been  so  for- 
tunate as  to  live  for  a  time  in  an  ancient 
walled  town,  even  under  modernism,  knows 
how  potent  is  the  psychological  force  of 
grey,  guarding  walls,  with  the  little  city 
within,  and  beyond  the  gates  not  only  the 
fields  and  orchards  and  vineyards  as  they 
were  in  the  old  days,  but  also,  and  Ivcpt 
aloof   by   the    ancient  walls,    the    railways 

[45] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

and  factories  of  an  inclement  modernism. 
No,  the  adjective  is  symbolical  merely, 
and  indicates  the  fact  that  around  these 
communities  there  is  drawn  a  definite  in- 
hibition that  absolutely  cuts  off  from  the 
town  itself  and  "all  they  that  dwell  therein" 
those  things  from  the  assault  of  which 
refuge  has  been  sought.  I  could  easily 
imagine  that  these  inhibitions  might  vary 
more  or  less  as  between  one  Walled  Town 
and  another,  although  certain  general 
principles  would  be  preserved  everywhere, 
since  these  would  be  implied  in  the  very 
movement  itself. 

Here  are  certain  examples  of  what  I 
mean.  The  antithesis  between  capital  and 
labour  would  be  impossible.  Some  form  of 
a  restored  guild  system  would  be  the  only 
workable  basis.  Production  would  be 
normally  for  use,  not  profit;  and  advertis- 
ing or  exploitation  of  any  kind,  or  any 
other  form  of  "  creating  markets,"  would 
be  rigidly  tabooed.  Every  family  would 
hold  land  sufficient  for  its  own  maintenance 
so  far  as  possible  farm  and  garden  products 
are  concerned.  Certain  large,  expensive 
machines,  by  their  nature  not  always  in  use, 
would  be  owned  by  the  community,  while 

[46] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

the  transportation  of  surplus  produce  to 
outside  markets,  the  maintenance  of  a  dairy 
and  a  canning  plant,  possibly  also  a  mill  and 
bakery,  would  be  communally  undertaken. 
As  joyful  living  through  that  simplicity 
which  follows  from  the  elimination  of 
unwholesome  desires  is  a  fundamental  prin- 
ciple, it  follows  that  in  every  case  there 
would  be  a  revival  of  the  old  principle  of 
sumptuary  laws,  certain  things  being  ex- 
cluded as  vicious  in  themselves,  others  as 
poisoning  in  their  influence.  Of  course 
there  is  great  danger  here,  since  there  is 
the  constant  menace  of  a  pernicious  in- 
fringement on  that  personal  liberty  which 
is  an  essential  of  all  right  living.  The  fact 
is  incontestable,  however,  that  our  present 
intolerable  social  condition  which  seems  to 
focus  at  one  point  in  the  "high  cost  of 
living"  is  due  to  two  things:  first,  the  mul- 
tiplication during  the  last  forty  years  of  an 
incalculable  number  of  foolish  luxuries 
and  "amenities  of  life"  we  were  far  hap- 
pier without,  but  which  now  through  fa- 
miliarity we  look  on  as  indispensable; 
second,  the  fact  I  already  have  referred  to 
that  more  than  half  the  labour  expended 
today    goes    to    produce    utterly    useless, 

[47] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

grossly  ugly,  or  vitiatingly  luxurious  com- 
modities, while  half  the  cost  of  this  ridicu- 
lous mass  of  superfluities  goes  to  the  tout, 
the  drummer,  the  tradesman  and  the  adver- 
tiser. In  some  way  the  balance  must  be 
restored,  and  this  can  be  accomplished 
partly  by  regulations  formally  set  forth, 
partly  by  the  moral  force  of  a  better  type 
of  life  actually  put  in  process  and  exerting 
its  silent  influence  over  the  people  them- 
selves. To  a  great  extent  it  would  be  a  case 
of  "  local  option "  extended  to  more  than 
the  question  of  drink.  It  would  be  neither 
useful  nor  wise  (indeed  it  might  be  action- 
able) for  me  to  attempt  a  list  of  the  things 
we  should  be  better  off  without.  Each  one 
can  make  his  list  to  suit  himself,  and  he  will 
be  surprised,  if  he  deals  with  the  question 
frankly,  at  the  length  of  the  schedule. 

There  is  no  way  in  which  life  can  be 
brought  back  to  a  sane  and  wholesome  and 
noble  basis  except  through  the  recovery  of 
a  right  religion  and  a  right  philosophy, 
the  establishing  of  a  new  industrial  and 
commercial  system  as  radically  opposed  to 
the  insanities  of  Bolshevism  as  it  is  to  the 
sinister  efficiency  of  the  capitalist-prole- 
tarian regime,  and  by  the  elimination  of 

[48] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

the  useless  and  crushing  impedimenta  that 
have  been  heaped  upon  us  by  "  labour- 
saving"  machines,  the  craft  and  ingenuity 
of  misguided  inventors,  and  the  monumental 
ability  of  the  system  of  advertising.  Within 
the  deadly  coil  of  life  as  it  is  now  irrevocably 
fixed  by  the  society  of  today,  there  is  no 
possibility  of  escape  (barring  the  threatened 
success  of  Marxian  socialism  as  this  has 
taken  shape  in  internationalism  and  Bol- 
shevism), for  the  individual  is  helpless, 
bound  hand  and  foot  by  the  forces  of  cus- 
tom, public  opinion,  lethargy  and  luxury, 
and  by  what  Dr.  Jacks  so  well  calls  "the 
tyranny  of  mere  things."  So  the  real  men 
felt  in  the  time  of  St.  Benedict,  and  of  St. 
Odo  of  Cluny  and  St.  Robert  of  Molesmes, 
of  St.  Norbert  and  St.  Francis  and  St. 
Dominic  and  St.  Bruno.  They  left  the 
world  in  order  that  they  might  regain  it, 
even  though  their  eyes  were  fixed  on  a 
heavenly  country.  For  themselves  and  their 
followers  they  gained  a  better  type  of  life 
than  the  world  could  then  offer,  and  their 
deeds  lived  after  them  in  centuries  of  a 
regenerated  life. 

It  is  our  habit  of  mind  to  think  of  the 
period  of  decline  and  catastrophe  that  in- 

[49] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

tervenes  between  one  era  and  the  next  as 
something  awful  and  ominf)us,  when  the 
whole  world  realizes  the  horror  of  change 
and  is  sunk  in  black  despair.  In  this  we 
are  undoubtedly  as  wrong  as  we  are  in  the 
case  of  our  interpretation  of  history.  St. 
Augustine  and  St.  Jerome  saw  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  but 
such  other  documentary  evidence  as  exists 
would  indicate  that  the  Romans  as  a  whole 
took  it  much  as  a  matter  of  course,  with 
little  sense  of  the  vastness  of  the  catastro- 
phe and  the  plenitude  of  the  humiliation. 
In  the  ninth  century  men  were  so  steeped  in 
the  universal  sin  and  corruption  they  ceased 
to  retain  any  perspective  whatever.  Very 
likely  while  Marozia  and  her  clan  were 
turning  Rome  and  the  Church  into  a  mon- 
strous ofifence  against  decency,  the  general 
public,  as  well  as  the  world-wide  corrupt- 
ing influences  themselves,  thought  that  their 
"civilization"  was  really  not  so  bad  after 
all.  The  same  is  true  of  the  fourteenth  and 
fifteenth  centuries,  when  the  beginnings  of 
the  Renaissance  dazzled  man's  eyes  to  the 
tragedy  of  the  ending  of  Medievalism  and 
the  fast  growing  profligacy  in  act  and 
thought.    We  ourselves  are  in  similar  case. 

[50] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

We  are  so  near  the  events  that  are  bringing 
modernism  to  an  end  that  we  can  estimate 
them  not  at  all  in  their  true  nature.  Read 
any  newspaper  of  today,  talk  with  any 
"practical  business  man,"  or  indeed  almost 
any  clerg^^man,  educator  or  professed 
"philosopher,"  and  you  will  find  the  atti- 
tude of  mind  that  looks  on  the  war  and  the 
current  beginnings  of  social  revolution  as 
untoward  episodes,  the  insane  creations  of 
froward  men,  that  only  need  time  and 
patience  for  the  crushing,  to  permit  the 
world  to  go  on  again  just  as  before,  only 
faster  and  more  gloriously,  towards  the 
iridescent  apotheosis  of  democratic  poli- 
tics, imperial  business,  scientific  acquisi- 
tion, and  the  reign  of  reason.  The  incubus 
of  the  thing-that-is  cannot  be  shifted  and, 
as  so  many  times  before,  it  is  only  ruth- 
less catastrophe  that  can  bring  it  to  an 
end. 

Similarly  we  do  not  realize  how  new  a 
thing  is  this  tyranny  of  the  material  prod- 
uct, this  obsession  of  the  machine  and  the 
things  it  produces,  the  ideas  and  habits  and 
superstitions  it  generates.  I  am  not  so  old 
a  man,  as  lives  run,  but  I  can  still  remember 
the  old  patriarchal  life  of  the  New  England 

[51] 


WALLED    TOWNS 

countryside  before  the  juggernaut  that 
crushed  wholesome  society  and  sane  living 
had  begun  its  fatal  course.  In  the  year  1880, 
when  1  first  knew  a  great  city,  there  were 
only  three  forces  then  in  operation  which 
differentiated  its  growth  that  had  not 
existed  in  the  time  of  Caesar  —  steam  as 
power,  the  electric  telegraph  and  the  ele- 
vator, the  last  a  novelty  of  less  than  ten  years' 
existence.  The  great  forces  that  were  to 
transform  society  had  been  in  existence  for 
varying  periods:  some  from  the  Renais- 
sance, some  from  the  Reformation,  some 
from  the  Civil  Wars  in  England,  some  from 
the  French  Revolution,  some  from  the 
mechanical  discoveries  betAveen  1767  and 
1830,  some  from  our  own  Civil  War.  It 
is  not  until  the  latter  date,  however,  that 
they  became  fully  operative;  and  the  in- 
cubus we  would  now  remove,  if  we  could, 
and  if  we  fully  realized  its  nature,  is  actu- 
ally the  creation  of  the  last  fifty  years. 

I  have  said  above  that  I  clearly  remember 
the  old  regime  as  it  stood  at  the  opening  of 
this  fifty-year  period  of  monstrous  aggrega- 
tion, exaggeration  and  acceleration,  and 
this  memory,  together  with  some  thirty 
years  of  study  of   Mediaeval   civilization, 

[52] 


WALLED    TOWNS 

has  much  to  do  with  the  conviction  that 
man  cannot  be  free  or  sane  or  reasonably 
happy  until  he  forcibly  tears  himself  (or 
forcibly  is  torn)  from  the  deadly  evil  of 
modernism  in  which  he  is  enmeshed.  The 
positive  memory  may  help  to  show  some- 
thing of  that  to  which  I  conceive  we  must 
return. 

In  the  year  1870  my  grandfather's  place 
was  to  all  intents  and  purposes  what  it  had 
been  since  the  first  portion  of  the  old  house 
was  built  during  the  reign  of  William  and 
Mary.  He  was  "  The  Squire  "  in  his  family 
and  over  the  community,  as  his  fathers  had 
been  before  him  for  two  centuries.  If  wills 
were  to  be  drawn,  land  surveyed,  property 
transferred,  family  quarrels  adjusted,  the 
duty  fell  upon  him.  From  a  material  point 
of  view  the  house  and  the  farm  and  the  way 
of  life  were  as  they  had  been.  There  was, 
I  think,  a  mechanical  corn-sheller,  but  I 
remember  no  other  new-fangled  mechani- 
cal device.  The  wheat  for  flour  was  grown 
on  the  place  and  ground  at  a  near-by  mill. 
Until  but  a  few  years  before,  the  wool  and 
flax  for  clothing  and  linen  were  also  of 
home  production,  while  the  great  loom  was 
still  in  its  place  in  the  dim  attic  with  its 

[53] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

odour  of  thyme  and  beeswax.  In  addition 
to  all  the  necessary  fruits  and  vegetables, 
all  the  butter,  cheese,  bacon,  hams  came 
from  the  estate.  So  of  course  did  the  honey 
and  the  mctheglyn,  or  honey-wine  as  you 
read  of  it  in  Chaucer,  which,  I  verily  be- 
lieve, was  made  there  last  of  all  places  in 
the  world.  To  a  great  extent  the  life  was 
still  communal.  For  mowing,  planting, 
havesting,  shearing,  husking,  the  farmers 
came  together  to  work  in  common,  while 
the  disability  of  one  brought  the  others 
together  to  do  his  work.  Communal  also 
in  a  sense  was  the  household.  Many  a  time 
have  I  awakened  as  a  boy,  between  lavender- 
scented  homespun  sheets,  and  beneath  a 
wonderful  woven  coverlet,  to  dress  in  the 
early  dawn  and  go  down  to  the  long  kitchen 
with  its  eight-foot  fireplace,  to  find  all  the 
feminine  portion  of  the  household  preparing 
such  a  breakfast  as  the  present  day  cannot 
afford ;  and  later  I  have  watched  the  neigh- 
bors gathered  in  the  "east  room"  ingeniously 
"drawing  in"  rugs  and  mats  of  marvellous 
(if  not  strictly  artistic)  design  and  colour. 
As  was  the  custom  in  that  country,  the  house 
was  double,  the  eldest  son  occupying  the 
new  wing  until  in  time  he  removed  to  the 

[54] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

old  part  and  his  son  in  turn  took  the  new. 
It  was  a  place  of  tradition,  of  immemorial 
custom,  of  self-respecting  because  arduous 
life,  and  every  inch  of  ancient  house,  of  vast 
and  rambling  barns,  even  of  the  fields  and 
pastures,  gardens  and  orchards  and  wood- 
land, was  redolent  of  old  history,  of  per- 
manence, of  stability,  of  dignity  and  of  a 
vivid  liberty. 

Here  was  no  telephone,  no  automobile, 
no  elaborate  collection  of  complicated  and 
costly  machines,  no  flood  of  cheap  news- 
papers, magazines  or  other  "  literature,"  no 
weekly  expedition  to  the  "movies,"  no 
ready-made  clothes  that  must  be  constantly 
replaced  or  that  annually  went  out  of 
fashion,  no  pianola  or  graphophone,  no 
"art-furniture,"  no  candy  and  cheap  drinks 
and  fruit  out-of-season.  Neither  was  there 
any  labour  problem,  or  strikes  or  poverty 
or  high-cost-of-living. 

"A  hard  life"  ?  Yes,  in  a  way,  but  its 
hardness  was  more  than  balanced  by  what 
it  gave:  self-respect,  liberty,  freedom  from 
the  tyranny  and  oppression  of  outside 
forces;  above  all,  character,  and  of  a 
strength  and  simplicity  and  fineness  it 
would  be  hard  to  match  today.     I  do  not 

[55] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

doubt  that  country  and  village  life  as  it  was 
then  in  the  North,  and  had  been  in  the 
South  until  ten  years  before  (not  as  it  had 
become  in  another  twenty  years  when  the 
new  forces  had  begun  to  seep  in),  was  more 
productive  of  real  happiness  and  of  sterling 
character  than  has  been  any  form  of  life 
that  has  developed  since. 

Of  course  there  was  the  other  side  to  the 
case.  Life  then,  good  as  it  was,  lacked  some 
of  the  qualities  that  existed  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  the  loss  of  which  was  a  serious  handi- 
cap. There  was  a  hard  and  unlovely  re- 
ligion, the  arts  had  wholly  disappeared,  and 
the  exquisite  environment  man  had  always 
made  for  himself  had  vanished  from  life. 
The  stimulus  and  the  vital  communal  sense 
of  the  old  guilds,  the  games,  the  merrymak- 
ing, the  living  religious  practices,  had 
faded  into  a  colder  and  more  austere  neigh- 
bourliness. The  comradeship  of  pilgrim- 
age and  common  adventure  and  "  church 
ales  "  had  vanished  utterly,  and  in  everyway 
life  was  becoming  more  drab  and  colour- 
less. Much  remained,  however,  though  in 
a  vanishing  estate,  of  the  clean  and  simple 
and  wholesome  life  of  a  dead  past,  and  in 
comparison  with  the  common  life  of  today, 

[56] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

on  the  farm,  in  the  factory,  in  village  or 
great  city,  it  must  commend  itself  in  such 
degree  that  many  sacrifices  are  worth  while 
if  we  can  win  it  back.  Win  it  back,  but  not 
as  it  stood  then.  Out  of  a  farther  past  must 
come  many  things  to  enrich  its  content  and 
make  more  beautiful  its  condition.  Out  of 
the  present  must  come  much  also.  An  ar- 
chaeological or  artificial  restoration  would 
be  as  undesirable  as  it  is  impossible.  What 
modernism  has  given  —  or  sold  —  that  is  in 
itself  good,  must  be  retained,  and  this  is 
much.  The  trouble  is  the  good  is  so  intri- 
cately mixed  with  the  bad  that  the  untan- 
gling seems  almost  hopeless.  Since  our 
standard  of  comparative  values  is  so  dis- 
torted we  have  no  sound  basis  from  which 
we  can  set  to  work.  Only  through  the 
process  of  what  is  really  a  new  spiritual 
enlightenment,  manifesting  itself  through 
both  religion  and  philosophy,  can  the  task 
be  accomplished,  for  no  ingenious  engine, 
no  clever  device,  no  political  panacea  will 
prove  even  of  temporary  value.  Probably 
the  control  of  this  spiritual  stimulus  is  out 
of  our  hands;  it  usually  is,  being  granted 
to  men  at  times,  at  other  times  withheld. 
While  v^'c  await  the  issue  we  can  at  least  try 

[57] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

humbly,  and  perhaps  doubtfully,  if  we  can- 
not take  the  first  steps  towards  earning  the 
indispensable  boon,  and  it  may  be  the  first 
step  will  be  into  Walled  Towns. 


[58] 


IV 

BEAULIEU  is  a  Walled  Town  and  it  lies 
about  forty  miles  from  one  of  the 
largest  cities  of  New  England.  The 
forty-mile  road  is  in  all  things  about  what 
such  a  road  is  today;  the  same  industrial 
suburbs,  with  the  further  fringe  of  slate- 
grey  tenements  in  their  dreary  and  dirty 
yards,  then  the  subsidiary  towns  of  dull  or 
flamboyant  cottages,  barren  railway  sta- 
tions, third-rate  shops,  harsh  factories,  each 
separated  from  the  next  by  marshes  or  bar- 
rens where  refuse  is  dumped,  and  specula- 
tive roads  and  house-lots  cry  their  unsav^oury 
wares.  Little  by  little  decent  residences 
crop  up  and  so  the  ring  of  reasonable 
opulence  is  reached,  —  now  as  then  good  so 
far  as  nature  is  let  alone,  bad  where  the 
architect  and  landscapist  and  gardener 
exercise  their  ingenuity.  Farms  follow, 
and  pasture  and  woodland,  unkempt  but 
inoffensive,  sometimes  even  beautiful  when 
the  hand  of  man  has  been  withheld.    Three 

[59] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

or  four  ambitious  and  growing  towns  break, 
the  good  country,  each  contributing  of  its 
own  in  the  shape  of  mills,  slums,  wastes, 
commercial  architecture,  gaudy  signs, 
hurry,  noise,  dust  and  bad  smells.  After  the 
last  there  is  an  interval  of  comparative  quiet 
and  decency  while  the  road  runs  through 
a  respectable  forest,  rising  as  it  enters 
among  low  hills,  with  a  glimpse  of  water 
here  and  there,  a  small  lake,  a  brook,  and  at 
last  a  fairly  wide  view. 

On  the  bridge  the  view  changes.  There  is 
something  different  in  the  lands  beyond, 
though  the  difference  is  at  first  intangible. 
It  is  farming  land  for  some  t^vo  or  three 
miles  in  front  and  reaching  in  a  wide  sweep 
right  and  left,  while  beyond  the  land  rises 
swiftly  with  a  rather  thick  growth  of  large 
trees  above  which  lift  two  or  three  grey 
stone  towers,  and  a  silvery  spire,  very  deli- 
cate and  lofty;  a  view  that  might  be  in  any 
English  county  or  in  France  or  the  Rhine- 
land.  The  farms  are  evidently  under  high 
cultivation,  divided  into  rather  small  fields 
by  hedgerows  marked  by  an  unusual  num- 
ber of  well-kept  trees.  There  are  few  farm- 
houses but  many  large  barns  of  stone  some- 
what suggesting  those  of  western  Pennsyl- 
[60] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

vania.  Such  houses  as  there  are,  arc  also  of 
stone  in  great  part,  with  brick  here  and 
there  and  considerable  white  plaster.  The 
well-built  road  is,  as  before,  crowded  with 
motor  vehicles,  but  two  things  have  wholly- 
ceased  at  the  river  —  advertising  signs  and 
smoking  factory  chimney;  as  far  as  the  eye 
can  see  neither  is  visible. 

The  zone  of  farms  is  quickly  passed  and 
then  comes  a  space  of  orchards  and  vine- 
yards; the  highway  divides,  one  branch  to 
the  right,  another  to  the  left,  and  at  the 
fork  stands  a  stone  shrine  with  the  figure  of 
St.  Christopher;  practically  all  the  motors 
go  to  the  right,  but  we  take  the  road  to  the 
left,  which  curves  sharply  after  a  few  hun- 
dred yards,  crosses  a  stone  bridge  of  a  single 
arch  over  a  narrow  but  swift  river,  and  is  in- 
tercepted by  a  long,  irregular  mass  of  stone 
buildings  with  many  mullioned  windows, 
and  a  lofty  tower  something  like  that  of 
St.  John's  College  in  Cambridge,  with  a 
broad,  high,  pointed  arch,  and  a  chain 
reaching  from  side  to  side,  blocking  the  way 
to  all  wheeled  traffic.  This  is  the  Bar  Gate 
of  the  Walled  Town  of  Beaulieu,  and  here 
all  automobiles  must  stop,  for  they  are  not 
permitted  within  the  town.  There  is  a  good 

[6i] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

garage  on  one  side ;  a  sort  of  inn  and  a  livery 
stable  on  the  other,  where  one  may  hire  a 
carriage  or  saddle  horses,  which  alone  are 
allowed  inside  the  gates. 

The  rambling  grey-stone  building,  which 
in  parts  rises  sheer  from  the  river's  edge  and 
is  not  unlike  Warwick  Castle,  serves  many 
purposes.  The  octroi  is  strict  and  all  goods 
brought  into  the  town  for  sale  must  pay  a 
varying  ad  valorem  tax,  while  the  "  liberty 
of  the  town"  is  granted  to  outsiders  only 
on  payment  of  a  small  fee.  No  one  can  sell 
in  the  town  without  a  license,  while  some 
things  are  wholly  prohibited,  such,  for  ex- 
ample, as  those  things  that  would  compete 
with  native  products,  whether  of  food-stuffs, 
manufacture  or  artisanship,  and  those  ar- 
ticles which  the  town  has  prohibited  as 
deleterious  or  as  "useless  luxuries."  A 
bailif^f  and  council  of  three  sit  here  in  a  fine 
stone-vaulted  room  opening  ofif  the  great 
gate,  for  three  hours  each  morning,  to  issue 
their  licenses  or  prohibitions.  Here  also  are 
the  town  telephones  and  telegraphs,  for 
while  these  as  well  as  motor  cars  are  recog- 
nized as  necessities  on  emergency  occasions, 
they  are  held  to  be  "useless  luxuries"  as 
private  possessions  and  are  forbidden  within 
[62] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

the  walls.  There  is  nothing  to  prevent 
a  townsman  owning  and  using  a  motor 
car  or  private  telephone  beyond  the  town 
walls,  if  he  likes,  though  this  is  looked  on 
with  disfavour,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  is 
unusual.  In  the  early  days  of  this,  as  of 
all  Walled  Towns,  and  to  some  extent 
thereafter,  those  who  became  townsmen  con- 
tinued their  business  or  professions  "  in  the 
world  outside  the  walls,"  that  is  to  say  in 
some  neighboring  city,  and  the  jurisdiction 
of  the  Walled  Town  did  not  extend  beyond 
its  own  precincts  and  lands.  Usually  in  a 
few  years'  time  these  men  adapted  them- 
selves to  the  town  life  and  law,  giving  up 
their  outside  interests  and  becoming  "  Bur- 
gesses of  the  Free  City"  with  their  interests 
and  material  activities  concentrated  within 
its  limits.  Conduct  of  government  is  wholly 
within  the  hands  of  these  burgesses.  As  for 
the  town  telephones  and  motor  cars,  their 
use  is  free  to  all  townsmen  in  cases  of  illness 
or  other  recognized  emergency. 

Over  the  gate-tower  floats  the  big  banner 
of  the  town,  above  the  arch  is  its  coat  of 
arms  emblazoned  in  colour  and  gold,  and 
within  the  gate  are  always  two  halberdiers 
on  guard.    This  is  not  affectation  or  a  wilful 

[63] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

mediaevalism,  but  because  all  the  Walled 
Towns  know  the  value  of  symbolism  and 
use  it  universally  and  intelligently.  All 
civic  ceremonials,  indeed  all  the  common 
acts  of  the  town  officials,  are  carried  out 
with  much  show  and  dignity  and  magnifi- 
cence. There  are  fine  robes  of  office,  precise 
etiquette,  elaborate  functions;  nothing  is 
done  casually  or  haphazard,  but  with  dig- 
nity, beauty  and  a  real  pride  in  the  nobility 
of  the  communal  life.  Long  before  the 
founding  of  the  first  Walled  Town  it  was 
generally  known  that  the  depravity,  or  at 
least  the  incompetence,  that  had  become 
chronic  in  civic  life,  was  partially  due 
to  the  false  "democracy"  which  had  shorn 

;  it  of  every  vestige  of  dignity,  of  ceremonial, 
of  difference  from  the  common  afifairs  of 
business  life,  and  the  potency  of  symbolism 
was  one  of  the  original  elements  in  the  great 
revolution     which     brought    the    Walled 

;  Towns   into  existence. 

Passing  now  under  the  great  echoing 
vault  of  the  Bar  Gate,  we  come  at  once  into 
the  town  itself.  There  is  first  of  all  a  small 
square  or  market-place  with  rather  thickly 
set,  stone-built  and  gabled  house,  with 
glimpses  between,  and  through  occasional 

[64] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

archways,  into  gardens  behind.  On  one 
side  is  the  Exchange,  a  considerable  build- 
ing with  an  open  arcade  along  its  front;  it 
is  here  that  the  surplus  products  of  the  town 
are  sold  —  grain  and  farm  produce,  cloth, 
or  whatever  it  may  be  that  is  paid  through 
the  tax  in  kind  or  placed  in  the  hands  of 
the  Exchange  officials  for  sale  outside  the 
community.  The  main  street  leads  from 
the  square  and  curves  up  a  slight  grade. 
Here  the  houses  are  well  separated,  with 
garden  walls  between,  sometimes  pierced  by 
grated  openings  that  give  more  glimpses 
of  gardens  around  and  behind.  As  in  the 
old  days,  these  houses  are  mostly  workshops 
and  salesrooms  as  well  as  residences,  for 
this  is  the  street  of  craftsmen  of  all  sorts  — 
workers  in  metals,  wood,  leather;  potters, 
embroiderers,  tailors;  carvers  in  stone, 
painters,  makers  of  musical  instruments. 
Every  craft  and  art  that  is  needed  by  the 
townspeople  is  found  here,  for  one  of  the 
foundation  stones  of  the  Walled  Towns  is 
self-sufficiency;  that  is  to  say,  everything 
ordinarily  needful  is  produced  by  the  town 
for  the  town,  the  necessities  that  cannot  be 
furnished  because  of  physical  and  climatic 
difficulties  being  reduced   to   the  smallest 

[65] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

number.  Coffee  and  tea,  a  few  spices,  trop- 
ical fruits,  rice,  tobacco,  cotton,  silk  and 
certain  wines  are  beyond  the  contriving  of 
a  Walled  Town  in  the  north  temperate  zone 
and  must  be  imported;  but  this  is  done  by 
town  officials,  who  are  paid  salaries,  and 
the  goods  are  resold  at  a  standard  advance 
on  the  wholesale  cost.  Everything  that  is 
possible  is  produced  within  the  town  itself, 
and  either  by  individual  craftsmen  or, 
where  bulk  products  are  necessary,  in  the 
workshops  maintained  by  the  community 
under  the  charge  of  a  special  and  salaried 
group  of  officials. 

The  specialization  and  localizing  of  in- 
dustries and  the  division  of  labour  were  two 
of  the  causes  of  industrial  civilization  — 
and  still  are  in  "  the  world  without."  That 
one  town  or  district  should  be  given  over 
to  the  weaving  of  cotton  or  the  spinning  of 
wool;  that  shoes  should  chiefly  be  produced 
in  Lynn,  furniture  in  Grand  Rapids,  glass 
in  Pittsburgh,  beer  in  Milwaukee,  hams  in 
Chicago;  that  from  all  over  a  vast  district 
the  raw  material  of  manufacture  should  be 
transported  for  hundreds,  perhaps  thou- 
sands of  miles,  to  various  howling  wilder- 
nesses of  highly  specialized  factories,  only  to 
[66] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

be  shipped  back  again  after  fabrication  to  be 
used  or  consumed  by  many  of  the  original 
producers,  was  and  is  one  of  the  prepos- 
terous absurdities  of  an  industrial  system 
supported  on  some  of  the  most  appalling 
sophistry  that  ever  issued  out  of  the  AduUa- 
mite  caves  of  political  economy. 

In  the  Walled  Towns  all  this  is  changed. 
In  the  first  place  no  man  is  a  free  burgess 
unless  he  is  a  land-holder,  and  the  minimum 
is  garden  land  sufficient  to  supply  all  the 
needs  of  his  family  that  can  be  satisfied 
from  this  source;  the  maximum  is  that 
amount  of  farm  land  that  he  can  maintain 
at  a  minimum  standard  of  productivity.  So 
far  as  I  know  every  family  also  keeps  as 
many  cows  and  poultry  as  will  furnish  the 
normal  requirements  in  the  shape  of  dairy 
products,  eggs,  and  fowl  for  eating.  The 
farms,  which  lie  outside  the  walls  and  quite 
surround  the  town,  do  more  than  this,  and 
much  produce  finds  its  way  to  the  com- 
munal dairy,  which  is  used  for  the 
production  of  butter  and  cheese  for  the 
townspeople,  and  also  for  sale  outside  the 
walls.  As  each  town  has  its  own  special 
products,  maintained  always  at  the  highest 
standard,  the  market  never  fails. 

[67] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

In  the  matter  of  cloth  and  clothing,  wool 
and  flax  are  grown  both  by  individuals  and 
by  the  community,  and  the  spinning  and 
weaving  are  done  in  the  town  mills.  These 
are  built  and  equipped  at  the  common 
charge  and  managed  by  officials  who  serve 
for  fixed  salaries.  A  certain  percentage 
on  the  value  of  all  raw  material  brought  in 
for  working  up  into  the  finished  product 
is  assessed  on  the  owner,  and  this  may  be 
paid  in  cash  or  in  kind.  No  raw  material 
is  ever  acquired  from  outside  the  commu- 
nity; all  internal  surplus  is  purchased  and 
made  up  into  cloth,  which  is  sold  first  to  any 
townspeople  who  wish  to  buy,  or  second  to 
outside  purchasers,  the  profits  going  to  de- 
fray the  running  expenses.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  there  is  always  a  large  surplus  of  wool 
and  flax  over  and  above  the  normal  needs 
of  each  producer,  and  the  mills  not  only  run 
at  a  profit  but  pay  well  on  the  original  in- 
vestment. In  these  mills  highly  perfected 
machinery  is  used,  for  while  the  Walled 
Towns  were  formed  partly  for  the  elimina- 
tion, so  far  as  possible,  of  machines  in  the 
afifairs  of  life,  it  is  realized  that  they  may 
be  used  as  actual  labour-savers,  and  without 
serious  injury  to  the  workman,  where  they 
[68] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

are  employed  on  bulk-production  such  as 
cloth,  and  where  the  element  of  competition 
is  eliminated.  Since  in  manufacture  of  this 
kind  division  of  labour  is  unavoidable  and 
the  work  is  mechanical  and  akin  to  drudgery, 
the  wages  paid  are  high,  while  the  hours 
of  employment  never  exceed  thirty  a  week. 
Practically  all  the  employees  are  able  to 
take  care  of  their  own  gardens  and  many 
have  small  farms  as  well.  During  the  seed- 
time and  harvest  periods  the  mills  are  shut 
down.  When  it  happens  (as  it  often  does) 
that  a  mill  shows  a  profit,  all  in  excess  of 
three  per  cent  on  the  value  of  the  plant  is 
divided  between  the  employees  and  the 
clerical  force,  for  one  of  the  established 
laws  of  all  Walled  Towns  is  that  capital  is 
entitled  only  to  a  fixed  return,  the  surplus 
belonging  to  the  labour,  both  mental  and 
physical,  that  produces  the  results.  Stock 
companies  as  such  are  strictly  prohibited 
and  it  is  unlawful  to  pay  money  for  the  use 
of  money  furnished  by  inactive  investors. 
The  mills  are  of  course  not  large;  they  are 
pleasantly  situated,  not  without  architectu- 
ral quality,  and  they  are  always  run  either  by 
water-power  or  by  electricity  hydraulically 
generated.    Steam  is  not  used  in  any  case. 

[69] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

The  restoration  of  real  crafts  has  resulted 
in  reducing  the  use  of  machinery  to  the 
lowest  terms.  Handicraft  has  been  re- 
stored, in  wood,  metals,  all  fancy  weaving, 
glass  making,  pottery,  leather-work,  and 
to  a  certain  extent  in  printing,  not  only  be- 
cause the  results  are  in  every  way  finer  and 
more  durable,  but  because  labour  so  em- 
ployed is  intelligent,  mentally  stimulating 
and  physically  satisfying,  while  by  so  much 
the  production  of  coal,  the  mining,  smelting 
and  forging  of  iron  ore,  and  the  fabricating 
of  articles  of  iron  and  steel  are  reduced. 
The  Walled  Towns  hold  that  such  labour 
is  mentally  stultifying  if  not  actually  de- 
grading, and  it  is  with  them  a  point  of 
morals  that  they  should  make  it  necessary 
to  the  smallest  degree  possible. 

The  main  street  leads  into  the  central 
square  of  the  town,  a  spacious  open  place  of 
great  dignity  and  beauty,  surrounded  by 
admirable  buildings  of  public  character, 
where  the  simplicity  of  the  houses  and 
shops  gives  place  to  considerable  richness 
both  in  design  and  in  colour.  On  one  side 
is  the  parish  church,  in  this  particular  case 
not  unlike  St.  Cuthbert's,  Wells,  only  half 
hidden  by  fine  trees  and  surrounded  by  a 

[70] 


/ 


WALLED   TOWNS 

green  and  shady  churchyard.  On  another 
side  is  the  Town  Hall,  also  with  a  lofty 
tower  flying  the  great  flag  of  the  city,  while 
the  other  sides  of  the  square  are  filled  with 
the  rich  facades  of  the  Guild  Halls.  Open- 
ing out  of  this  central  square  is  the  Market 
Place,  entered  through  a  noble  archway 
between  two  of  the  Guild  Halls,  and  in  this 
square  is  the  Market  House  and  several 
more  Guild  Halls.  Opposite,  a  street  con- 
nects after  some  few  hundred  feet  with  a 
third  open  place,  in  this  case  a  pleasure  gar- 
den, and  here  are  the  theatre,  the  concert 
hall,  the  public  baths,  the  principal  inn  and 
several  cafes  and  shops,  the  latter  being 
more  especially  devoted  to  those  things 
which  are  associated  with  the  lighter  side 
of  life. 

Beyond  the  immediate  vicinity  of  these 
squares  come  the  dwelling-places,  each  a 
separate  house  with  a  garden  never  less  than 
an  acre  in  extent.  No  multiple  houses  of 
any  sort  are  permitted  and  each  family  must 
maintain  a  separate  house  and  garden.  The 
roads  here  wind  pleasantly  and  are  well 
shaded  by  trees;  niched  statues,  both  secular 
and  religious,  and  shrines,  are  quite  com- 
mon.   Here  also  are  the  several  conventual 

[71] 


WALLED    TOWNS 

establishments  belonging  to  various  orders, 
and  varying  much  as  between  one  town  and 
another,  but  there  is  always  a  house  for  men 
and  one  for  women.  In  the  particular  town 
we  are  considering,  the  chief  monastic  in- 
stitution is  Benedictine,  and  it  stands  on 
higher  land  than  the  rest  of  the  town  and 
is  a  true  abbey  both  in  size  and  in  its  official 
status.  There  is  also  a  house  of  Dominican 
Sisters  and  one  of  Canons  Regular  of  St. 
Augustine.  Where  the  land  begins  to  drop 
down  again  towards  the  river  as  it  curves 
around  on  the  side  of  the  town  opposite 
that  at  which  we  entered,  is  the  college, 
with  very  spacious  grounds,  groves  and 
gardens,  the  whole  commanding  a  wide 
view  out  across  the  zone  of  farms  and  so  to 
the  low  hills  on  the  horizon  to  the  west. 

Let  us  now  retrace  our  steps  to  the  group 
of  squares  and  see  something  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  various  buildings  and  the  part 
they  play  in  the  life  of  the  Walled  Town. 
We  will  interrogate  some  citizen  in  each 
case  who  can  best  explain  that  portion  of 
the  polity  with  which  he  is  associated.  The 
first  shall  be  the  parish  priest,  and  he  shall 
talk  to  us  as  we  sit  in  the  lych-gate  with  the 
silvery  grey  church  behind,  and  in  front  the 

[72] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

square  where  people  are  constantly  passing 
back  and  forth,  —  not  the  dull,  drab  throng 
of  men  in  ugly  "sack-suits"  and  "derby" 
hats  of  the  cities  of  the  outer  world,  and 
women  in  fantastic  finery  or  sordid,  sad- 
coloured  gowns,  but  a  self-respecting  people 
with  some  sense  of  beauty  and  a  manifest 
delight  in  colour. 

"There  is,"  says  the  parson,  "as  you  will 
see,  only  one  parish  church,  though  as  the 
town  has  grown  other  chapels  have  been 
added  in  other  quarters,  each  of  which  is 
under  a  vicar  who  is  one  of  the  general  body 
of  parish  clergy.  The  whole  town  forms 
one  parish  and  the  whole  body  of  parochial 
clergy  sit  together  to  deal  with  the  spiritual 
affairs  of  the  town,  while  all  the  free 
burgesses  meet  in  common  to  deal  with 
the  temporal  interests  of  the  parish.  No, 
there  are  no  denominational  divisions. 
Each  town  as  it  is  founded  is  made  up  only 
of  those  of  the  same  religious  convictions, 
and  thereafter  none  is  added  who  is  not  of 
the  same  belief.  Denominationalism  is  in- 
consistent with  unity  of  action,  cooperation 
and  true  democracy,  and  however  much  the 
laws  and  customs  of  the  Walled  Towns  may 
vary   (and  there  is  no  little  diversity)   in 

[  73  1 


WALLED   TOWNS 

this  there  is  complete  unanimity.  No  one 
is  of  course  constrained  to  go  to  church  or 
accept  the  ministrations  of  the  clergy,  al- 
though refusal  is  practically  unheard  of. 
There  have  been  cases  of  those  who  have 
lost  their  faith,  but  sooner  or  later  this 
means  their  withdrawal  from  the  town  it- 
self. The  parish  church  is  actually  the 
centre  of  spiritual  life  of  the  community. 
Its  services  are  very  numerous,  particularly 
on  Sundays  and  holy  days,  and  it  is,  as  you 
have  seen,  a  sort  of  synthesis  of  all  the  arts 
raised  to  the  highest  attainable  level.  Each 
guild  has  either  its  own  chapel  or  altar,  and 
once  a  year  it  holds  a  great  service  at  which 
its  members  are  bound  to  be  present. 

"The  relationship  bet^veen  the  Church 
and  civic  life  is,  I  suppose,  about  what  it  was 
before  the  Reformation.  Religion  enters 
into  all  the  affairs  of  life  as  it  did  then,  and 
the  visible  manifestations  are  pretty  much 
the  same.  You  will  have  noticed  the  many 
shrines  and  statues  in  all  parts  of  the  town, 
and  you  can  also  see  within  a  few  days'  time 
one  of  the  many  festival  processions  through 
the  streets.  In  the  Walled  Towns  religion 
is  not  a  hidden  thing,  nor  is  it  segregated 
in  a  few  places  and  confined  to  one  day  in 

[74] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

the  week.  In  the  world  outside  the  wails, 
where  the  old  sectarian  divisions  still  con- 
tinue, this  realization  of  religion  would  be 
impossible;  but  within  the  walls,  because  of 
the  unanimity  of  conviction  on  the  part  of 
those  that  are  drawn  to  any  particular  town, 
it  is  not  only  possible  but  inevitable." 

We  cross  the  square  and  enter  the  Town 
Hall  with  its  shady  arcades  and  its  painted 
and  gilded  statues  like  those  on  the  Hotel 
de  Ville  of  Bourges.  We  go  up  a  broad 
stone  stairway  and  enter  the  anteroom  of  the 
Provost,  who  is  the  head  of  the  government. 
The  room  has  fine  tapestries  on  the  walls, 
with  much  well-carved  furniture,  and  the 
guards  and  ushers  suggest  neither  by  their 
costumes  nor  their  manners  the  familiar 
police  officers  on  duty  in  the  ordinary  city 
hall.  The  building  and  the  officials  and  the 
grave  and  rather  stately  ceremonial  all 
convey  the  impression  that  a  Walled  Town 
is  both  a  City  State  and  a  Free  State,  and 
that  its  formal  and  personal  expression  is 
a  matter  of  dignity,  reverence  and  self- 
respect.  Once,  not  long  ago,  being  in  a 
large  city  of  the  North-West,  I  was  in- 
vited to  address  the  Mayor  and  Aldermen 
on  certain  matters  pertaining  to  that  dcpart- 

[75] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

ment  of  my  own  city  government  of  which 
I  happened  to  be  the  head.  The  corridors 
were  crowded  with  dirty  or  sinister  loafers 
interspersed  with  burly  policemen.  There 
were  spitoons  everywhere  which  served 
only  a  part  of  their  purpose.  The  Mayor's 
reception  room  was  not  unhandsome,  but  it 
was  full  of  knots  of  whispering  and  sly-eyed 
political  hangers-on,  reporters,  and  more 
loafers,  while  the  air  was  rank  with  tobacco- 
smoke.  Presently  the  Mayor  and  Alder- 
men strolled  in,  hailing  various  individuals 
by  nicknames  and  slang  phrases,  and  dis- 
posed themselves  at  ease  around  a  long 
table;  some  were  in  their  shirt-sleeves,  for 
it  was  a  hot  midsummer  day.  I  was  listened 
to  politely  enough,  and  the  questions  asked 
were  not  unintelligent;  it  was  the  attitude, 
the  form,  that  was  at  fault.  The  whole 
thing  was  more  like  a  social  meeting  of 
commercial  travellers  in  the  office  of  a 
country  hotel  than  a  session  of  the  govern- 
ing body  of  a  great  cit>\ 

After  this  digression  let  us  return  to  our 
Walled  Town.  From  the  anteroom  we  are 
conducted  to  the  state  reception  room,  and 
here  we  are  received  by  the  Provost  in  his 
long,  furred  gown  and  his  gold  chain  of 

[76] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

office.  He  is  an  old  man,  grey-bearded, 
and  his  courtly  manners  indicate  at  once 
his  breeding,  his  self-respect  and  his  sense  of 
the  dignity  and  significance  of  his  position. 
From  him  we  learn  that  only  land-holders 
are  burgesses  of  the  town  and  that  no  others 
possess  a  vote  or  may  hold  office;  the  dis- 
tinction is  less  invidious  than  it  might  ap- 
pear, for  land-holding  is  so  fundamental  a 
principle  in  the  Walled  Towns  that  there 
are  almost  none  who  cannot  qualify.  Gov- 
ernment is  in  the  hands  of  the  Provost  and 
Council,  with  a  small  group  of  department 
heads  who  with  the  Provost  form  the  exec- 
utive. Any  hundred  burgesses  may  unite  for 
the  purpose  of  choosing  one  of  their  num- 
ber to  the  Council,  and  as  this  particular 
town  contains  about  three  thousand  bur- 
gesses the  Council  consists  of  thirty  men  who 
are  chosen  annually,  while  the  Provost,  who 
is  elected  by  the  Council,  holds  office  for  ten 
years.  There  would  appear  to  be  very  little 
legislation;  each  year  the  Provost  presents, 
with  the  financial  budget,  a  programme  of 
legislation,  and  until  this  is  disposed  of, 
private  legislative  bills  may  not  be  con- 
sidered. A  further  guard  against  the  uni- 
versal   curse   of    democracy,    reckless    and 

[77] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

ill-digested  legislation  initiated  by  single  in- 
dividuals, is  the  provision  that  any  private 
bill  must  be  indorsed  by  one  fifth  of  all  the 
Councillors  before  it  can  be  introduced. 

Taxation  is  almost  wholly  in  the  form  of 
rent  of  land,  and  here  the  scale  is  fixed  from 
the  moment  the  land  is  taken  over,  while  it 
varies  as  between  arable  land,  forest,  or- 
chard, pasture,  garden  and  "  tenement,"  i.  e. 
land  on  which  is  a  dwelling.  If  through 
his  own  industry  a  land-holder  improves 
any  portion  of  his  holding,  he  receives  a 
rebate  on  his  taxes;  if  he  allows  any  land 
to  degenerate,  his  tax  is  increased.  The  tax 
revenue  is  supplemented  by  various  fees, 
small  in  amount  and  not  numerous,  and  by 
the  "gate  tax"  imposed  on  those  from  out- 
side who  are  admitted  to  buy  or  sell  within 
the  walls.  Public  indebtedness  is  prohibited 
by  law,  the  revenue  must  always  meet  the 
annual  expenditure,  and  no  bonds  secured 
by  public  credit  may  be  issued. 

The  Walled  Towns  have  definitelv  aban- 
doned  the  nineteenth  century  theory  that  the 
vote  is  a  "natural  right."  As  said  before,  this 
privilege  is  exercised  only  bv  land-holders 
(the  greatmajority  of  citizens)  but  it  may  be 
withdrawn  for  long  or  short  periods  and 

[78] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

for  reasons  specified  in  the  charter.  Any 
man  found  guilty  of  a  crime  or  misde- 
meanour forfeits  the  franchise,  and  for  peri- 
ods varying  from  one  year  to  life,  dependent 
on  the  gravit^^of  the  offence.  The  burgesses 
vote  only  through  their  "hundreds"  and 
solely  for  the  choosing  of  Councillors,  but 
the  election  of  a  Provost  must  be  confirmed 
by  a  mass-meeting  of  all  burgesses,  and  any 
change  in  the  charter  must  be  submitted 
for  the  same  approval. 

The  Law  Courts  of  a  Walled  Town  offer 
many  points  of  difference  to  those  of  "the 
world  without."  In  the  first  place,  it  is  a 
fundamental  principle  that  the  object  of 
a  Court  of  Law  is  the  administering  of 
justice,  the  defence  of  right,  and  the  pun- 
ishment of  wrong.  An  appeal  to  technicali- 
ties is  therefore  prohibited,  and  any  advocate 
who  makes  such  an  appeal  is  promptly  dis- 
barred. Normally  all  cases  are  tried  and 
determined  by  a  bench  of  judges,  though 
in  certain  cases  the  plaintiff  or  defendant 
may  demand  a  jury  trial.  Of  course  all 
Judges  are  appointed  by  the  Provost  for 
life.  In  addition  to  the  regular  municipal 
courts  there  is  a  Court  of  Conciliation. 
Under  the  oath  of  each  citizen  to  obey  and 

[79] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

support  the  charter,  every  case  must  be 
taken  to  the  Court  of  Conciliation  before 
recourse  is  had  to  the  regular  courts  of  law, 
the  result  being  that  very  few  cases  fail  of 
adjustment  without  formal  legal  process. 
The  Law  Courts  themselves  are  housed  in 
a  building  of  a  degree  of  beauty  unusual 
even  in  a  Walled  Town  where  ugliness  is 
unknown,  while  the  form  and  ceremony 
reach  the  final  height  of  grave  majesty. 

Let  us  now  visit  one  of  the  guild  halls, 
for  it  is  in  the  guild  that  we  may  find  the 
root  of  the  entire  economic  system  w^hich 
so  sharply  dififerentiates  society  within  the 
walls  from  that  without.  We  may  take  any 
one  of  the  half-dozen  or  more,  for  all  are 
practically  the  same  except  in  the  design  of 
their  buildings  and  the  decoration,  the 
liveries  of  the  members  and  officials,  and 
the  guild  banner. 

All  society  is  organized  under  the  guild 
system,  and  every  man  must  be  a  registered 
member  of  one  guild  or  another.  The 
guild  of  the  farmers  is  the  largest,  and  usu- 
ally it  is  to  this  that  those  citizens  belong 
who  are  officials  or  professional  men.  Then 
there  are  guilds  of  metal-workers  of  all 
kinds,  cloth-makers,  builders,  artists,  etc. 
[80] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

When  a  Walled  Town  is  founded  with 
small  numbers  the  list  of  guilds  is  very 
small,  but  as  the  town  increases  so  do  the 
guilds,  and  the  different  industries  organ- 
ize their  own  groups.  A  guild  is  an  arti- 
ficial family  made  up  of  all  those  of  a 
common  interest.  Its  objects  are:  human 
fellowship,  cooperation,  mutual  aid  in  ill- 
ness or  misfortune,  the  maintaining  of  the 
highest  standard  in  the  product  of  all  its 
members,  prevention  of  inordinate  profits, 
regulation  of  the  relationship  between 
masters,  journeymen  and  apprentices,  the 
standardizing  of  wages  and  profits,  craft 
training  and  education,  the  maintenance 
of  and  common  participation  in  religious 
services,  and  finally  the  purchase  of  raw 
materials  and  the  ownership  and  mainte- 
nance of  large  and  costly  machinery  in  the 
few  cases  where  that  is  employed. 

In  the  Walled  Town  the  division  between 
capital  and  labour  does  not  and  can  not 
exist.  Since  production  is  for  use,  not 
profit,  since  competition  is  impossible  under 
the  guild  system,  and  since  no  advertising 
is  permitted  beyond  a  sign-board  (and  they 
are  sometimes  most  notable  works  of  art, 
these  painted  and  gilded  and  carven  signs), 

[8i] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

exploitation,  whether  of  labour  or  markets, 
is  unknown.  One  of  the  fundamental  points 
in  the  town  charters  is  the  definite  prohibi- 
tion of  the  ''unearned  increment."  Money 
may  not  be  taken  or  paid  for  the  use  of 
money,  except  within  each  guild,  and  here 
only  under  what  are  practically  emergency 
conditions,  the  rate  of  interest  never  exceed- 
ing three  per  cent.  Every  guild  has  its  own 
fund,  made  up  from  dues,  bequests,  and  a 
percentage  of  profits  on  the  sale  by  the  guild 
of  such  surplus  products  as  may  be  handed 
over  to  its  officers  for  disposal ;  but  this  fund 
cannot  be  invested  at  interest  outside  the 
walls  nor  is  any  portion  available  for  other 
than  guild  members,  except  that  the  town 
may  use  it  for  current  expenses  in  anticipa- 
tion of  the  regular  land-taxes  (or  rent) ,  pay- 
ing three  per  cent  therefor,  and  returning  it 
within  the  space  of  a  year.  The  system  is 
practically  a  restoration  of  the  guild  system 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  any  one  may  find 
for  himself  further  details  by  referring  to 
the  many  books  on  the  subject;  e.  g.  those  of 
William  Morris,  Arthur  Penty  and  Prince 
Kropotkin.  It  is  the  precise  antithesis  of 
collectivism,  socialism  and  trades-unionism 
of  whatever  form. 

[82] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

Within  the  Walled  Towns  the  educa- 
tional system  shows  few  points  of  resem- 
blance to  the  standards  and  methods  still 
pursued  outside.  It  is  universally  recog- 
nized that  the  prime  object  of  all  education 
is  the  development  of  inherent  character, 
and  for  this  reason  it  is  never  divorced 
from  religion;  the  idea  of  a  rigidly  secu- 
larized education  is  abhorrent,  and  the 
dwellers  in  the  Walled  Towns  rightly  at- 
tribute to  its  prevalence  in  the  nineteenth 
century  much  of  the  retrogression  in  char- 
acter, the  loss  of  sound  standards  of  value, 
and  the  disappearance  of  leadership  which 
synchronized  with  the  twentieth  century 
break-down  of  civilization  even  if  it  were 
not  indeed  its  primary  cause.  Neither 
is  there  any  false  estimate  of  the  possibilities 
of  education;  it  is  held  that  while  it  can 
measurably  develop  qualities  latent  in  the 
child  by  reason  of  its  racial  impulse,  it  can- 
not put  in  what  is  not  there  already.  The 
old  superstition  that  education  and  environ- 
ment were  omnipotent,  and  that  they  were 
the  safeguards  as  well  as  the  justification 
of  democracy,  since  given  an  identical  en- 
vironment and  equal  educational  oppor- 
tunities an  hundred  children  of  as  many 

[8.5] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

classes,  races  and  antecedents  would  turn 
out  equal  as  potential  members  of  a  free 
society,  has  long  since  been  abandoned.  It 
is  impossible  to  enter  into  this  question  at 
length,  but  the  chief  points  are  these. 

Education  is  not  compulsory,  but  parents 
are  bound  to  see  that  their  children  can 
"  read,  write  and  cipher."  Primary  schools 
are  maintained  by  the  town  and  are  con- 
ducted largely  along  the  lines  first  de- 
veloped by  Dr.  Thomas  Edward  Shields 
in  the  early  twentieth  century.  Beyond 
primary  grades  the  schools  are  maintained 
by  various  units  such  as  the  guilds,  the  par- 
ish and  the  monasteries  and  convents. 
While  considerable  variation  exists  as  be- 
tween one  school  and  another,  they  are  all 
under  the  supervision  of  the  Director  of 
Education  in  order  that  certain  standards 
may  be  maintained.  Variety  both  in  sub- 
jects taught  and  in  methods  followed  is  held 
to  be  most  desirable,  and  complete  freedom 
of  choice  exists  between  the  schools,  though 
a  parent  wishing  to  send  a  child  to  some 
school  other  than  those  maintained  by  his 
own  guild  pays  an  annual  fee  for  the  privi- 
lege. Beyond  reading,  writing,  arithmetic 
and  music,  which  are  common  to  all,  the 

[84] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

curriculum  varies  widely,  though  history, 
literature  and  Latin  are  practically  univer- 
sal. In  some  schools  mathematics  will  be 
carried  further  than  in  others,  in  some 
natural  science,  while  elsewhere  literature, 
history,  modern  languages  will  be  empha- 
sized. There  is  no  effort  to  subject  all  chil- 
dren to  the  same  methods  and  to  force  them 
to  follow  the  same  courses,  —  quite  the  re- 
verse; neither  is  the  object  the  carrying  of 
all  children  through  the  same  schools  to  the 
same  point.  It  is  held  that  beyond  a  certain 
stage  most  children  profit  little  or  nothing 
by  continued  intensive  study.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  are  always  those  whose  de- 
sires and  capacities  would  carry  them  to 
the  limit.  These  are  watched  for  with  the 
most  jealous  care,  and  if  a  boy  or  girl 
shows  special  aptitude  along  any  particular 
line  he  becomes  an  honour  student,  and 
thereafter  he  is  in  a  sense  a  ward  of  the 
community,  being  sent  without  charge  to 
the  higher  schools,  the  college,  and  even 
on  occasion  to  some  university  beyond  the 
limits  of  the  Walled  Town  if  he  can  gain 
there  something  not  available  within  the 
walls.  Of  course  any  student  may  continue 
as  far  as  he  likes,  or  is  able,  but  this  is  not 

[85] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

encouraged  except  in  the  case  of  the  honour 
student,  and  he  must  himself  meet  his  own 
expenses.  The  authorities  are  particularly 
careful  to  discover  any  special  ability  in  any 
of  the  arts,  literature  and  philosophy,  and  it 
is  the  boast  of  the  Walled  Towns  that  no  one 
who  gives  promise  along  any  one  of  these 
lines  need  fail  of  achievement  through  lack. 
of  opportunity.  In  the  case  of  the  various 
crafts  also  the  same  care  is  exercised,  and  a 
boy  showing  particular  aptitude  is  at  once 
given  the  opportunity  of  entrance  into  the 
proper  guild  as  an  apprentice,  after  he  has 
been  prepared  for  this  by  a  modified  course 
of  instruction  adapted  to  his  particular 
ability. 

The  college  has  something  the  effect  of  a 
blending  of  New  College,  Oxford,  and  St. 
John's,  Cambridge.  It  is  perhaps  the  most 
beautiful  element  in  the  Walled  Town,  and 
here  every  intellectual,  spiritual  and  artistic 
quality  is  fostered  to  the  fullest  degree. 
The  college  is  a  corporation  under  control 
of  the  alumni  and  the  faculty,  not  in  the 
hands  of  trustees,  as  was  the  unfortunate 
fashion  amongst  American  universities  in 
the  nineteenth  century.  There  are  many 
fellowships  granted  for  notable  achieve- 
[86] 


WALLED   TOWxNS 

ments  along  many  lines,  and  a  Fellow  may 
claim  free  food  and  lodgings  for  life,  if  he 
choose,  the  return  being  certain  service  of 
a  limited  nature  in  the  line  of  instruction, 
either  as  lecturer  or  preceptor.  A  few 
students  are  received  from  without  the 
walls,  but  the  number  may  not  exceed  five 
per  cent  of  the  student  body,  and  high  fees 
are  charged  for  the  privilege.  There  are 
no  regular  courses  divided  into  four  years. 
An  honour  student  must  take  his  Bachel- 
or's Degree  within  six  years,  his  Master's 
Degree  in  not  less  than  two  years  thereafter, 
and  his  Doctorate  in  another  four  years, 
otherwise  his  privilege  lapses  and  he  must 
pay  as  other  students,  in  which  case  there 
are  no  limits  whatever  and  a  man  may 
spend  a  lifetime  in  study  if  he  desires  — 
and  can  pay  the  price.  All  the  regular 
members  of  the  Faculty  must  be  burgesses, 
but  many  lecture  courses  are  given  by  visit- 
ing professors  from  all  parts  of  the  world. 
Latin  is  a  prerequisite  for  the  Bachelor's 
and  Master's  Degrees,  and  Greek  for  a 
Doctorate,  whatever  the  line  that  may  be 
followed. 

As  has  been  said  above,  the  recreation 
quarter  of  the  town  is  around  a  square  or 

[87] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

garden  a  short  distance  from  the  central 
square.  Here  are  to  be  found  the  public 
baths  and  gymnasium,  together  with  a 
number  of  gay  and  attractive  cafes  and  res- 
taurants, the  theatres,  concert  halls,  etc.  To 
a  very  great  extent  all  the  music  and  drama 
are  the  product  of  the  people  themselves. 
As  has  been  said,  music  is  almost  the  foun- 
dation of  the  educational  system,  therefore 
trained  as  they  are  from  earliest  childhood, 
good  music,  vocal,  instrumental,  orchestral, 
even  operatic,  is  a  natural  and  even  inevit- 
able result.  The  same  is  true  of  the  drama, 
and  nightly  plays,  operas,  concerts  are 
given  by  the  townspeople  themselves  which 
reach  a  standard  comparable  with  that  of 
professionals  elsewhere.  Now  and  then, 
as  a  mark  of  special  commendation,  actors, 
singers  and  musicians  are  invited  by  the 
Provost  and  Council  to  visit  the  town,  but 
as  a  general  thing  all  is  done  by  the  people 
themselves.  The  moving  picture  show  is 
prohibited. 

With  all  the  rich  pageantry  of  life  in  a 
Walled  Town,  the  magnificent  church  serv- 
ices, where  all  the  arts  assemble  in  the 
greatest  aesthetic  synthesis  man  has  ever 
devised,  the  religious  and  secular  festivals 

[88] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

with  their  processions  and  merrymaking 
and  dancing,  the  form  and  ceremony  of 
ecclesiastical  and  civic  life,  and  the  unbroken 
environment  of  beauty,  the  craving  for 
"shows"  which  holds  without  the  walls 
and  must  be  satisfied  by  tawdry  and  sensa- 
tional dramatic  performances,  professional 
entertainers  and  the  "movies,"  is  largely 
absent  here  where  all  life  is  couched  in 
terms  of  true  drama  and  living  beauty. 
Here  is  no  hard  line  of  demarcation  be- 
tween a  drab  and  sordid  and  hustling  daily 
life  on  the  one  hand,  and  "amusement"  on 
the  other.  All  the  arts  are  in  constant  use, 
and  music  and  drama  are  merely  extensions 
of  this  common  use  into  slightly  different 
fields.  The  same  holds  good  of  the  other 
arts.  An  "art  museum"  is  unknown,  for 
it  is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  The  Walled 
Town  is  full  of  pictures  and  sculpture  and 
all  the  products  of  the  art-crafts;  but  the 
latter  are  in  every  household,  while  the 
pictures  and  sculptures  are  in  all  the 
churches  and  public  buildings,  where  they 
belong,  and  are  constantly  and  universally 
visible.  If  an  old  picture  is  obtained,  or 
a  Mediaeval  statue  or  a  tapestry,  it  is  at  once 
placed   in   a   position   similar   to   that   for 

[89] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

which  it  was  originally  intended.  Tt  would 
be  perfectly  impossible  for  the  authorities 
to  put  a  Bellini  altar-piece  in  a  yawning 
museum,  jostled  by  crowded  others  and 
visible  on  week-days  on  payment  of  an  ad- 
mission fee,  "  Saturday  afternoon  and  Sun- 
day free."  Instead  it  is  placed  over  an 
altar  in  the  parish  church  or  in  some  chapel. 
There  are  museums  of  sorts,  but  they  are 
connected  with  the  guild  halls  and  contain 
only  models  for  instruction  and  emulation. 

And  what  of  the  social  organism  as  it  has 
developed  under  these  definite  modes  of 
action?  In  the  first  place  there  are  certain 
explicit  inhibitions,  as  has  already  been  in- 
dicated, the  elimination  of  many  details  of 
luxury  and  artificial  desires  which  tend  to 
turn  much  human  energy  to  futile  ends,  to 
raise  the  cost  of  living  to  abnormal  heights, 
to  establish  false  levels  between  those  that 
have  and  those  that  have  not,  and  that  de- 
feat every  sane  effort  towards  a  simplifica- 
tion of  life  and  its  maintenance  in  accord- 
ance with  right  standards  of  comparative 
value.  Desires  have  not  been  reduced  in 
force,  but  they  have  been  vastly  cut  down 
in  number  and  turned  towards  real  values. 
Owing  to  the  ban  on  usury  and  the  unearned 

[90] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

increment,  and  the  restoration  of  production 
for  use  in  place  of  production  for  profit, 
wide  variations  in  wealth  no  longer  exist, 
although  there  are  still  differences  due  to 
thrift,  more  intelligent  or  prolonged  work, 
and  above  all  to  superiority  in  the  thing 
produced.  Variations  in  social  status  still 
exist;  indeed  they  are  fostered,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  but  they  are  no  longer  based  either  on 
money  or  on  power.  A  Walled  Town  is  at 
the  same  time  individualist,  cooperative 
and  aristocratic,  so  far  more  closely  resem- 
bling MediiEval  society  than  any  other  that 
has  existed,  and  therefore  sharply  differ- 
entiated both  from  society  as  it  had  become 
in  the  nineteenth  century,  and  as  it  was 
aimed  at  by  the  socialists,  the  anarchists  and 
the  democrats  of  the  same  period.  As  all 
society  is  organized  in  guilds,  and  as  in 
each  there  are  the  three  classes  of  appren- 
tices, journeymen  and  masters,  so  while 
each  class  has  its  own  recognized  status, 
there  is  an  equally  recognized  difiference 
between  them.  An  apprentice  may  not 
hold  land,  therefore  he  cannot  be  a  burgess 
of  the  free  city,  while  a  journeyman  or 
master  may  not  become  a  burgess  unless  he 
does  hold  land,  and  only  burgesses  partici- 

[91] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

pate  in  the  civic  duties  and  privileges  of  the 
town.  There  are  certain  offices  which  only 
a  master  may  hold,  and  there  are  others 
which  are  open  only  to  those  masters  who 
have  become  members  of  one  of  the 
Academies,  or  who  belongs  to  the  Order  of 
Knighthood.  The  Provost,  for  example, 
may  be  chosen  only  from  amongst  the 
knights.  These  highest  ranks  of  dignity 
are  constituted  as  follows: 

In  each  Walled  Town  there  are  several 
Academies,  each  made  up  of  those  masters 
in  the  several  guilds  who  have  achieved  the 
highest  eminence.  There  is  one  Academy 
of  Science  and  Craft,  an  Academy  of  Arts 
and  Letters,  an  Academy  of  Philosophy, 
etc.  Entrance  into  this  circle  of  supreme 
achievement  is  efifected  either  by  direct 
choice  of  the  members  of  the  Academy,  in 
which  case  the  guild  from  which  the  can- 
didate is  chosen  must  ratify  the  choice,  or 
by  nomination  on  the  part  of  the  guild, 
when  the  recommendation  so  made  must  be 
sanctioned  by  the  members  of  the  Academy. 
Only  high  proficiency  in  some  specified 
direction  is  ground  for  election  to  these 
Academies,  and  membership  is  an  honour 
of  the  greatest  distinction.     The  Order  of 

[92] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

Knighthood,  however,  is  conferred  rather 
for  high  qualities  of  character  and  for  pub- 
lic service;  any  man,  apprentice,  minor 
official,  servant,  may  be  made  a  Knight 
if  he  demonstrates  some  high  quality  of 
honour  or  service.  Here  the  power  to 
nominate  lies  in  the  hands  both  of  the 
Provost  and  of  the  knights  themselves,  but 
the  latter  have  the  right  to  confirm  or  reject 
the  nominee  of  the  Provost,  while  he  has  the 
same  power  if  the  nomination  comes  from 
the  knights.  Both  the  Academies  and  the 
knights  have  the  right  to  degrade  and  ex- 
pel a  member  of  their  own  order;  but  when 
this  is  done  it  must  be  as  the  result  of  an 
open  trial,  if  the  accused  so  demands.  Con- 
viction of  certain  crimes  and  ofifences  works 
degradation  automatically. 

The  object  of  these  higher  circles  of 
specially  chosen  individuals  is  the  ofiicial 
recognition  of  character  and  achievement 
and  the  constituting  of  certain  groups  of  dis- 
tinguished men  whose  duty  it  is  to  guard 
the  highest  ideals,  not  only  of  their  own 
crafts,  but  of  society  itself  through  the  free 
city  which  embodies  their  communal  life. 
The  Walled  Towns  know  well  that,  while 
all  men  are  equal  in  the  sight  of  God  and 

[93] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

before  the  Law,  there  is  otherwise  no  such 
thing  as  equality,  that  it  would  be  fatal 
were  it  ever  achieved,  and  that  the  efforts  at 
its  accomplishment  have  undermined  such 
society  as  we  once  had  until  it  has  crumbled 
and  crashed  into  the  unhandsome  debris 
of  its  own  ruin.  The  determination  of  in- 
equalities by  false  standards  of  comparative 
value  is  almost  as  ill-favoured  a  thing  as 
a  doctrinaire  equality;  between  the  cash 
values  of  the  bourgeois  nineteenth  century 
and  the  crazy  overturnings  and  levellings 
and  topsy-turvydom  of  twentieth  century 
"democracy,"  or  Bolshevism,  there  is  little 
to  choose.  High  values,  few,  cherished, 
recognized  and  honoured,  are  one  great  end 
of  society,  of  life  itself,  and  it  is  in  these 
crowning  marks  of  distinction  and  achieve- 
ment that  humanity  finds  its  best  expression 
as  well  as  its  safe  guides  and  sure  leaders. 
In  the  Walled  Towns  is  always  the  ardent 
quest  for  something  to  honour,  w^hether  it 
is  some  concrete  product  of  art,  science, 
letters,  craftsmanship,  or  whether  it  is  a 
citizen,  an  ideal,  a  memory  of  the  past,  a 
figure  in  history,  a  saint  —  or  God  Himself. 
Honour,  service,  loyalty,  worship,  —  these 
things  have  wholly  taken  the  place  of  an 

[94] 


WALLED   TOWNS 


insolent  assurance  of  equality,  a  bawling 
about  rights,  a  denial  of  superiority,  a 
proclaiming  of  the  omnipotence  of  men 
"  by  virtue  of  their  manhood  alone." 


[95] 


IT  will  be  evident  at  once  that  the 
Walled  Towns  are  founded  in  deliber- 
ate opposition  to  nineteenth  century  de- 
mocracy as  well  as  to  its  bastard  issue,  its 
Mordred  and  its  Nemesis,  anarchy  and 
Bolshevism,  and  to  its  inevitable  but  blood- 
kin  enemy,  socialism.  Through  state  so- 
cialism, communism  or  internationalism  a 
fool-hardy  and  illiterate  democracy,  sur- 
rendering at  discretion  to  the  materialism 
of  industrial  civilization,  has  striven  to 
maintain  the  thing  itself  in  all  its  integrity 
and  its  wealth-producing  potency  while 
turning  its  products  into  the  hands  of  the 
many  rather  than  the  few.  Even  now,  with 
the  myrrh  of  war  still  bitter  on  the  lips,  the 
dim  visions  of  greater  things  are  fading 
away,  and  only  one  cry  goes  up  for  ever 
greater  production,  for  more  intensive  ef- 
fort, in  order  that  the  material  losses  may 
be  retrieved. 

Neither  by  state-socialism  nor  by  Soviets 

[96] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

nor  by  any  other  ingenious  device  can 
wholesome  social  conditions  be  brought  out 
of  a  thing  unwholesome  in  itself;  neither 
can  a  new  control,  a  new  basis  of  production 
and  distribution,  or  new  laws,  compacts  and 
covenants,  take  the  place  of  a  new  spiritual 
energy,  a  new  vision  of  ultimate  values  and 
their  relationships.  That  communism,  col- 
lectivism and  social  democracy  have  all 
gone  bankrupt  during  and  following  the 
war  is  one  truth  at  least  we  have  learned. 
The  methods  were  foolish  enough  but  the 
object  aimed  at,  the  preservation  and  re- 
demption of  modern  industrialism,  was 
worse. 

The  impulse  and  incentive  towards 
Walled  Towns,  whenever  it  comes,  will  be 
primarily  social,  the  revolt  of  man  against 
the  imperial  scale,  against  a  life  of  false 
values  impregnably  intrenched  behind  cus- 
tom, superstition  and  self-interest,  against 
the  quantitative  standard,  the  tyranny  of 
bulk,  the  gross  oppression  of  majorities.  It 
will  echo  a  demand  for  beauty  in  life  and 
of  life,  for  the  reasonable  and  wholesome 
unit  of  human  scale,  for  high  values  in  ideal 
and  in  action,  for  simplicity  and  distinction 
and  a  realization  of  true  aristocracy.     En- 

[97] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

gendered  of  a  new  spiritual  outlook,  it  may 
be  fostered  by  the  compulsion  of  circum- 
stance, for  in  spite  of  the  brave  front  as- 
sumed by  those  who  even  now  are  looking 
towards  a  future,  it  becomes  daily  more 
apparent  that  the  war  has  destroyed  modern 
society  and  that  in  spite  of  all  the  best  in- 
tentions in  the  world  it  can  never  be  re- 
stored. The  whole  fabric  of  industrial 
civilization,  already  rotten  at  heart,  has 
collapsed;  it  could  not  save  the  world  from 
universal  war  and  it  possesses  no  power  to 
enforce  its  own  recuperation.  In  five  years 
the  potential  in  men  has  been  cut  down  by 
millions,  an  enormous  amount  of  machinery 
for  production  and  transportation  has  been 
destroyed,  together  with  much  arable  land 
and  many  mines.  The  birth-rate  steadily 
decreases  all  over  the  world  and  with  no 
evident  prospect  of  a  reversal  of  the  process. 
The  debts  of  all  the  warring  nations  have 
reached  a  point  where  in  some  cases  the  in- 
terest charges  alone  will  almost  amount 
to  the  whole  pre-war  budget.  The  entire 
system  of  credit  and  of  international  finance 
has  become  hopelessly  disorganized  and  no 
one  has  yet  suggested  any  way  in  which  it 
may  adequately  be  restored.     Neither  ar- 

[98] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

mistice  nor  peace  has  brought  about  even 
the  beginnings  of  industrial  recovery;  the 
demand  is  fabulous  and  acute,  but  the 
problems  of  raw  materials,  transportation, 
credits,  and  of  markets  that  will  not  only- 
take  but  also  pay,  are  apparently  unsolv- 
able;  meanwhile  national  debts  are  still 
increasing  through  the  payment  of  enor- 
mous amounts  to  the  unemployed. 

To  meet  the  crisis  there  is  an  unanimous 
cry  for  a  resumption  of  production,  and  for  a 
vastly  augmented  output  through  increased 
efficiency  and  more  intensive  methods,  but 
the  crying  is  in  vain,  for  meanwhile  the 
working  element  has  entered  on  a  course  of 
restriction  that  will  inevitably  nullify  every 
effort  at  increasing  the  output.  Partly 
through  its  pre-war  victories  in  the  contest 
with  capital,  partly  through  the  abnormal 
wage  returns  brought  into  being  through 
the  desperation  of  the  managers  of  the  war, 
labour  is  now  successfully  engaged  in  the 
work  of  cutting  down  production  far  be- 
low what  it  was  even  ten  years  ago,  both  by 
reducing  the  hours  of  work  and  by  vastly 
augmenting  the  wage.  The  actual  produc- 
tivity of  a  "labour  unit"  today  is  less  than 
at  any  time  since  industrialism  became  the 

[99] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

controllingclcmcntin  life,  and  in  many  cate- 
gories it  is  less  and  less  productive  of  satis- 
factory results.  Under  these  conditions  it 
is  hard  to  see  just  how  the  reconstructionists 
expect  to  obtain  that  greatly  increased  out- 
put they  admit  is  the  only  visible  hope  of 
saving  the  world  from  bankruptcy,  chaos 
and  barbarism. 

The  contest  is  an  unfair  one,  for  the  en- 
trance of  Bolshevism  has  added  a  new 
factor  hitherto  unknown.  Enraged  by  the 
failure  of  strikes  and  other  war  measures  to 
improve  their  condition,  labour  is  increas- 
ingly turning  to  the  small  minority  of 
avowed  revolutionists  who  proclaim  the 
rather  obvious  fact  that  so  long  as  industry 
is  engineered  by  the  two  antagonistic  forces 
of  capitalism  and  proletarianism,  no  perma- 
nent improvement  in  the  state  of  the  latter 
is  possible.  Every  increase  in  wages  is 
followed  automatically  by  a  greater  in- 
crease in  the  cost  of  living,  and  the  ratio 
today  between  a  wage  of  eighty  cents  an 
hour  and  the  cost  of  food,  clothing  and 
shelter,  is  less  advantageous  than  was  the 
case  when  this  sum  represented  not  a  wage 
per  hour,  but  per  day.  The  reason  for  this 
state  of  things  is  not  thought  out  with  any 
[  loo] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

particular  degree  of  exactness,  and  the  leap 
is  made  in  the  dark  to  revolution,  confisca- 
tion and,  of  late,  to  Bolshevism.  The  ease 
with  which  an  insignificant,  alien  and  un- 
scrupulous minority  has  succeeded  in  de- 
stroying society  in  Russia  and  Hungary,  and 
the  apparentease  with  which  the  same  theory 
has  almost  been  carried  out  in  Germany, 
and  may  be  carried  out  in  France  and  Italy 
—  not  to  speak  of  North  Dakota  —  has 
aroused  all  the  latent  savagery  and  the 
impulse  to  revolt  in  large  sections  of  the 
working  classes,  but  it  has  also  completely 
terrorized  the  politicians  if  not  the  capital- 
ists themselves,  and  the  menace  of  anarchy 
is  met  cringingly  and  half-heartedly.  It 
has  even  acquired  a  strong  if  somewhat 
veiled  defence  among  contemporary  di- 
rectors of  human  destiny. 

Were  it  not  for  the  results  of  Bolshevism 
wherever  it  is  being  tried,  the  situation 
might  appear  hopeless,  for  it  begins  to  look 
very  much  as  though  the  attitude  of  labour, 
now  apparently  fixed,  would  make  impos- 
sible the  industrial  restoration  on  which 
statesmen,  captains  of  industry  and  high 
financiers  count  for  the  saving  of  the  situa- 
tion.    If  this  fails  then  there  appears  no 

[lOl] 


WALLED    TOWNS 

escape  from  international  bankruptcy  and 
a  complete  breakdown  of  the  modern  social 
system,  with  all  this  implies  of  poverty,  un- 
employment and  even  starvation.  This  is 
the  breeding-ground  of  Bolshevism,  but  the 
hope  lies  in  the  fact  which  is  becoming  more 
apparent  every  day,  that  the  thing  is  even 
worse  for  the  proletarian  than  for  the  cap- 
italist or  the  man  of  culture  and  education, 
the  criminal  being  the  only  one  that  derives 
any  profit  from  the  adventure.  A  few 
months  more  of  Lenine,  Trotsky  and  Bela 
Kun,  and  the  danger  of  Bolshevism  will 
have  passed,  so  far  certainly  as  the  United 
States,  Great  Britain,  France  and  Italy  are 
concerned. 

Yet  with  the  removal  of  this  peril  the  pos- 
sibility of  a  social  and  industrial  break- 
down still  remains,  and  whether  in  antici- 
pation thereof,  or  as  a  forced  expedient 
under  sudden  catastrophe,  the  Walled 
Town  ofifers  itself  as  a  means  of  solution, 
since  it  does  not  depend  for  its  existence  on 
the  maintenance  or  recovery  of  the  pre-war 
industrial  system  —  rather  on  its  rejection 
and  reversal  —  while  equally  it  is  the  pro- 
phylactic against  Bolshevism  and  its  entire 
reversal. 

[102] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

And  so  the  Walled  Towns  go  back  to  an 
earlier  age  before  modernism  began;  back 
to  the  dim  cities,  the  proud  cities,  the  free 
cities  of  centuries  ago.  They  wall  them- 
selves against  the  world  without,  and  build 
up  within  their  grey  ramparts,  and  guard 
with  their  tall  towers,  a  life  that  is  simpler 
and  more  beautiful  and  more  joyful  and 
more  just  than  that  they  had  known  and 
rejected  because  of  its  folly  and  its  sin.  As, 
long  ago,  when  the  world  became  too  gross 
or  the  terror  of  its  downfall  too  ominous, 
cell  and  hermitage,  convent  and  monastery 
grew  up  now  here,  now  there,  in  secluded 
valleys,  on  inaccessible  mountains,  in  the 
barren  and  forgotten  wilderness;  as  the 
solitary  drew  around  him  first  a  handful, 
then  a  horde;  as  the  damp  cave  or  the 
wattled  hut  gave  way  to  multitudinous 
buildings  and  spacious  cloisters  and  the  tall 
towers  of  enormous  churches,  so  now,  when 
time  has  come  full  circle  again,  is  all  to  be 
done  over  once  more  though  after  a  different 
fashion. 

Men  have  despaired  of  redeeming  a 
crumbling  or  recalcitrant  world  and  have 
gone  out  into  the  desert  for  the  saving  of 
their  own  souls,  and  lo,  the  world  followed 

[103] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

and  by  them  was  saved.  From  each  centre 
of  righteousness  and  beauty  and  salvation 
radiated  circle  after  circle  of  ever  widening 
influence;  the  desert  and  the  waste  became 
orchard  and  garden,  the  ribald  and  the 
lawless  and  the  insolent  came  knocking  at 
the  gates;  soldier  and  bravo  and  king 
humbled  their  heads  before  tonsured  monk 
and  mitred  abbot.  Ever  wider  waxed  the 
increasing  circles  until  they  touched, 
merged,  —  and  the  wonder  was  accom- 
plished ;  ill  had  come  to  an  end  and  good 
had  come  into  being. 

So  the  Walled  Towns,  now  when  the 
need  is  clamorous  again.  Evil  imperial 
in  scale  cannot  be  blotted  out  by  reform 
imperial  in  method.  The  old  way  was 
the  good  way,  the  way  of  withdrawal  and 
of  temporary  isolation.  "To  your  tents,  O 
Israel!"  Gather  together  the  faithful  and 
them  of  like  heart,  building  in  the  w^ilder- 
ness  sanctuaries  and  Cities  of  Refuge.  The 
old  ideals  are  indestructible;  they  survive 
through  the  scorching  of  suns  and  the  beat- 
ing of  tempests  and  as  ever  they  are  omnipo- 
tent when  they  are  rightly  used.  Not  for 
long  would  the  Walled  Towns  stand  aloof, 
and  rampired  against  an  alien  and  unkindly 
[  104] 


WALLED   TOWNS 

world,  for  more  and  more  would  men  be 
drawn  within  their  magical  circuits,  greater 
and  ever  greater  would  become  their  num- 
ber, and  at  last  the  new  wonder  would  be 
accomplished  and  society  once  more 
redeemed. 


[105] 


UNIVERSITY   OF  C:ALIFC)RMA    LlltKAKY 

Los  Anpi'IfH 

This  hook  is  1)1  1.  on  ihr  hist  «hiU-  s(aMi|K(l  hth)H. 


Discr,v.r;.z-u;iL 
DEC    £1979 

MAR  1 1 1984 


24139 


^c: 


3  1158  00437  5118 


iu) 


